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TOWARDS
A NF W I

-ARCHITECTURE-

Le Corbusier

TOWARDS A NEW
ARCHITECTURE

m m i;

TOWARDS A NEW
ARCHITECTURE

LE CORBUSIER

Translated from the thirteenth French edition
and with an Introduction by

FREDERICK ETCHELLS

DOVER PUBLICATIONS, INC.

New York

This Dover edition, first published in 1986, is an unabridged and
unaltered republication of the work originally published by John
Rodker, London, in 1931, as translated from the thirteenth French
edition and given an English introduction by Frederick Etchells.

Manufactured in the United States of America

Dover Publications, Inc., 31 East 2nd Street, Mineola, N.Y. 11501

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Le Corbusier, 1887-1965.

Towards a new architecture.

Reprint. Originally published: London : J. Rodker, 1931.

1. Architecture. 2. Functionalism (Architecture). I. Title.
NA2520.L3613 1986 720' 85-20468

ISBN 0-486-25023-7

INTRODUCTION

“ Say not thou. What
is the cause that
the former days were
better than these ? ”

— Eccles. vii. io.

A MAN of the eighteenth century, plunged suddenly into our
A civilisation, might well have the impression of something akin
to a nightmare.

A man of the ’ nineties , looking at much of modern European
painting, might well have the impression of something akin to a
nightmare}

A man of to-day, reading this book, may have the impression
of something akin to a nightmare. Many of our most cherished
ideas in regard to the “ Englishman’s castle ” — the lichened tiled
roof, the gabled house, patina — are treated as toys to be discarded,
and we are offered instead human warrens of sixty storeys, the
concrete house hard and clean, fittings as coldly efficient as those of
a ship’s cabin or of a motor-car, and the standardised products
of mass production throughout.

We need not be unduly alarmed. All the inventions that go to
make up our modern civilisation, so far as it has gone, have
awakened the same terrors . The railway, it was prophesied, would

ruin the countryside, the motor-car the roads, and the airplane
the upper air. All these things have happened, and to a large
extent the criticisms were true, and yet man still survives and carries
on, and seems happy or unhappy to much the same degree as

1 The first Post-Impressionist show in England horrified most people at the time,
yet now the fatrves of that receding pre-war past are hailed as being in the great
tradition, and are used as sticks with which to beat their successors and followers.

INTRODUCTION

before. The truth is that man has an uncanny faculty of adapting
himself to new conditions. He learns to admit and even, in a
sneaking sort of way, to like new and strange forms. The new
form is at first repugnant, hut if it has any real vitality and
justification it becomes a friend. The merely fantastic soon dies.

Now, in modern mechanical engineering, forms seem to be developed
mainly in accordance with function. The designer or inventor probably
does not concern himself directly with what the final appearance
may be, and probably does not consciously care. But men are en-
dowed in varying degree with an instinct for ordered arrangement,
and this can come into operation even when least thought of. The
ordinary motor-car engine is a conspicuous example of this. Some
are disorderly and “ messy ” in arrangement ; others well planned
and cleanly disposed.

In structural engineering the same thing appears. The modern
concrete bridge or dam may be a crude and ungainly affair, or it may
possess its own grave and stark beauty ; the structure being equally
good and functional in either case.

It is inevitable that the engineer, preoccupied with function and
aiming at an immediate response to new demands , should produce new
and strange forms, often startling at first, bizarre and disagreeable.
Some of these forms are not worth constant repetition and soon
disappear into the limbo of forgotten things. Others stand the test of
use and standardisation, become friendly to us and take their place as
part of our general equipment. A.nd these good new forms, so
foreign to us and so disturbing at first view, are seen in the long run
to have a curious affinity with those of a similar function in any good
period of history.

■ !

By permission of G.P.A . Ltd.

LIVERPOOL. ENTRANCE GATE TO NEW LOCK

The photograph shows one leaf of the new river entrance lock being moved
into position on timber launchwajs. The gates are closed by wire rope attach-
ments. This leaf alone weighs 500 tons, and the gates will be the largest in
the world.

be too far ahead of their moment. The artist, on the other hand,
particularly the painter, may generally find it nearly impossible to

vith other people’s
politicians, cannot

viii

INTRODUCTION

live ; but if he is able to establish one of those curious compromises by
means of which he can carry on a lean existence , he is at least free
(at times) to project himself on paper or canvas without necessary
reference to anything or anybody ; and to make experiment and
research for its own sake. This passion, renewed in our own day by,
it is true, a comparatively small body of artists, has resulted in that
disconcerting hut formidable body of work which angers unnecessarily so
many people.

The modern engineer, then, pursues function first and form second,
but it is difficult for him to avoid results that are plastically good.
The good modern painter pursues plastic form for its own sake, and
if he has the necessary ability the results are plastically satisfying.

These things are true of the modern engineer and the painter. Are
they true of the architect, who in some ways combines the functions of
both ? M. he Corbusier would emphatically tell us “ No / ” His
book is a challenge to the members of his own profession. He writes,
that is to say, as an architect for architects, and as a scholar always
with an eye on the work of the great periods ; and he writes more in
sorrow than in anger l He is no fauve, no “ revolutionary f but a

sober-minded thinker inspired by a fierce austerity. Towards a
New Architecture was written, of course, originally for French
readers, and there are points in it which obviously have not the same
force applied to conditions in England or America ; but the book 1
is the most valuable thing that has yet appeared, if only because it
forces us, architects and laymen alike, to take stock, to try to discover
in what direction we are going, and to realise in some dim way the

1 Taken in conjunction with Le Corbusier’s later volumes. Urbanism and U Art
Decoratif d’aujourd’hui.

MODERN SYNTHETIC MATERIALS
MEWES & DAVIS, F. F. R. I. B. A., ARCHITECTS.

INTRODUCTION

strange paths we are likely to he forced to travel whether we will
or no.

The average architect of to-day , then, M. he Corbusier would tell
us, is a timid and poor-spirited creature, afraid to look facts in the
face. He plays his little tricks with this or that historic “ style ,” and
he can turn his attention to order from u Gothic ” to “ Classical,” to
“ Tudor,” “ Byzantine,” or what not. By concentrating his train-
ing so largely on these superficial aspects, Le Corbusier would
say, all “ styles ” become equally available to the architect for
exploitation. Not so, he would say, is great or even good architecture
produced }

But it will be said, we cannot escape the past or ignore the pit from
which we were hewn. True ; and it is precisely Le Corbusier 1 s
originality in this boofi that he takes such works as the Parthenon or
Michael Angelo's Apses at St. Peter's and makes us see them in
much the same direct fashion as any man might look at a motor-car
or a railway bridge. These buildings, studied in their functional and
plastic aspects — all that is accidental or merely stylistic being relegated
to its proper minor place — emerge under a new guise and are seen to
be far more closely and strangely akin to a first-rate modern concrete
structure or a Rolls Royce car than to the travesties of themselves on
which we have battened.

This book, then, is an important contribution to the modern study
of architecture, and to the study of modern architecture ; it may annoy
but it will certainly stimulate. M. Le Corbusier has not wasted time
and space on a catalogue raisonne of modern buildings ; he has

1 This is, of course, a relatively new state of affairs dating roughly, with ex-
ceptions, from the time of the Industrial Revolution; though the Victorian era in
England, with all its faults, had its own mind and its own outlook.

INTRODUCTION

which modern enterprise is conducted. The Trust or Combine has
greatly ameliorated its character in latter years , and seems likely to
be a permanent f eature of “ big business ” ; the Store has largely
replaced the small shop ; urban dwellers are finding themselves more
and more housed in huge blocks of flats ; problems of transport and
traffic will sooner or later demand a radical transformation of our

confined himself to the statement of some of the problems that confront
the modern man , and so the modern architect , and he has indicated
solutions as much by his presentment of ancient buildings as by that of
modern ones.

These problems arise mainly out of the vastly increased scale on

A MODERN FACTORY. SMART & STEWART, ARCHITECTS

INTRODUCTION

xii

streets — all these factors mean fresh problems and fresh solutions , and
it is our business to use the materials and constructional methods to our
hand , not , of course , blindly , but with a constant endeavour to improve
them .

And this process is certainly going on, whatever we may think of
the results. An architecture of our own age is slowly but surely
shaping itself ; its main lines become more and more evident. The
use of steel and reinforced concrete construction ; of large areas of plate
glass ; of standardised units (as, for example, in metal windows) ;
of the flat roof ; of new synthetic materials and new surface treatments
of metals that machinery has made possible ; of hints taken from the
airplane, the motor-car or the steamship where it was never possible,
from the beginning, to attack the problem from the academic stand-
point — all these things are helping, at any rate, to produce a twentieth -
century architecture whose lineaments are already clearly traceable. A
certain squareness of mass and outline, a criss-cross or <c grid -iron ”
treatment with an emphasis on the horizontals, an extreme bareness of
wall surface, a pervading austerity and economy and a minimum of
ornament ; these are among its characteristics. There is evolving,
we may begin to suppose, a grave and classical 1 architecture whose
fully developed expression should be of a noble beauty.

It is a delight to note the first faint indications of a spontaneous
and unforced interest in cesthetic matters on the part of the modern
man. He has had an admirable unconscious schooling through the
trim efficiency and finish of the machines and apparatus which surround
and govern so much of his daily life. Already the average user of the
motor-car is beginning to take a keen pleasure in good bodywork , in

1 But not imitatively so.

INTRODUCTION

functional or purely constructional character to embrace works of even
greater significance,

I give here one or two quotations which seem to suggest the trend of
thought in this direction. They are not taken , it will be seen, from
“ revolutionary ” sources.

. . education has touched business groups, companies and
combines , who march behind the banner of better building . . .
and contribute to the aesthetic amenities of cities and towns by

xiii

cleanness of line and general design. It must be many years indeed
since such close attention has been given to a particular aesthetic problem
by so large a number of human beings. It is not too much to hope
that this interest may soon include within its scope our modern archi-
tecture , passing from, it may be, an appreciation of works of a

MODERN DOORS. W. A. PITE, SON & FAIRWEATHER, ARCHITECTS

XIV

INTRODUCTION

allowing architects freedom from stereotyped ideas, thereby per-
mitting glimpses of the twentieth -century spirit in building. . . .
Industrial buildings are accepted as deplorable necessities by some
critics ... the terms ‘ utilitarian * and ‘ harsh * are regarded
as synonymous. . . Mr. John Cloag, who writes this in the
Architects 5 Journal of January 12, 1927, thinks the latter
view “exasperating,” and goes on to say: “Utility untram-
melled by an imagined need of some disguising ‘ style * is

not lacking in beneficent effect upon the form of an industrial
)>

Mr. R. A. S. Paget, in a letter to The Times, summarised
in the Architects’ Journal of April 7, 1926, thinks that Regent
Street should have been designed as two great continuous stores
facing one another in separate blocks which composed it, being
connected by covered ways, tunnels or bridges at convenient
intervals, so that customers could pass from one block to another
in protection from the weather. He would also have had direct
covered communication from the Tube station to the shops and
motor omnibus passenger stations, so that the public could alight
and embark under cover. The pavements in front of the shops
would be arcaded, while the lighting of the ground- floor shop-
fronts would be secured by clerestory windows in the shop-fronts
themselves above the level of the roof of the arcade, so as to avoid
the objections which were fatal to Nash's original arcades. On
the roof of the arcades he would form an attractive open-air
promenade for use in fine weather, with raised foot-bridges
crossing the side of the streets.

From an advertisement in the “Hospital” number of the
Architects’ Journal of June 24, 1925. — “ The modern hospital
is a triumph of the elimination of the detrimental and the un-
essential. Because of its absolute fitness to purpose its operation
theatre — like the engine room of an ocean liner — is one of the
most perfect rooms in the world.” (This is indeed the voice of
Jacob ! )

INTRODUCTION

As to mass-production, this is no new thing. All use of machinery
has, of course, tended to mass-production. But the process goes much
further hack. The carpenter’s plane hears much the same relation to
the ad%e that the safety ra^or does to the older sort (which I confess I
am conservative enough still to use), and in both cases the more modern

AN operating theatre.
WALSH & MADDOCK, ARCHITECTS

tool achieves what we may call a mass-produced surface. And printing
began merely as mass-produced writing. We have been burdened in
this country with a timid Arts and Crafts movement, which has
inevitably helped to obscure and deny the real virtues of mass-
production ; hut this feeling, though it still lingers, is negligible, and
even “artistic” people may now enjoy without apology the admirable
products of mass-production.

XVI

INTRODUCTION

Above all, in considering the vital problems adumbrated in this
book, we must avoid any sort of snobbery. To take a small
and unimportant case, the outcry against the modern roadside
petrol pump seems to me a good example of this, and to be also
the purest nonsense. I do not, of course, pretend that petrol
pumps possess any great beauty or interest ; but they are probably
pleasanter than our pillar-boxes, and certainly than the majority
of our lamp -posts. They are painted in clean heraldic colours which
perform to perfection the true purposes of heraldry, and they give
some touch of life and colour to our evil suburbs and our moribund
villages.

This book, then, in its 'English dress, is published with the
object of stimulating thought and arousing interest in the serious
problems with which it deals. I have no doubt that some of the
modern Trench work illustrated in these pages will appear un-
pleasing to many of us, but that might apply to individual
architectural works of any school. We claim, and I think rightly,
that we have gone far in this country towards solving the problem
of the small or medium -si^ed house that shall be trim, well and
economically planned, and pleasant in its general lines. We can
hardly claim to have gone as far in matters of town-planning on a
large scale, or in the provision of the immense modern structures
which will inevitably be needed still more in the near future. A
reading of this book may open out some avenues of thought in
this direction.

Some apology is needed for the translation . M. Le Corbusier

writes in a somewhat staccato style which is a little disconcerting
even in Trench ; and his book is of the nature of a manifesto.

INTRODUCTION

xvii

My aim has been to present a rendering as close and literal as
possible , at the expense of some awkwardness in phrasing and
the retention of a certain number of Gallicisms .

Frederick Etchells.

Note. — Since the above was written I have read with much interest and pleasure,
as some of my readers must have done, the report of the admirable paper read
before the Royal Institute of British Architects on Monday, March 14, 1927, by Mr.
Howard Robertson on “ Modern French Architecture.” The tone, both of the
paper itself and of the discussion which followed it, was so discriminatingly sane
and judicious that I advise any reader of this book to procure a copy of the
Journal of the Royal Institute of British Architects of March 19, 1927, where a full
report will be found. p

A ROOFING TILE

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

THANKS ARE DUE TO THE FOLLOWING, WHO HAVE
PERMITTED THE USE OF ILLUSTRATIONS WHICH ARE
THEIR PROPERTY : MESSRS. CROSSLEY AND CO. LTD.,

MESSRS. INDENTED BAR AND CONCRETE ENGINEERING
CO. LTD., MESSRS. JOHN P. WHITE AND SONS LTD.,
MESSRS. LANGLEY LONDON LTD. ; AND TO THE
ARCHITECTS WHOSE NAMES APPEAR BELOW THE PLATES.

xviii

CONTENTS

PACK

INTRODUCTION V

ARGUMENT I

THE ENGINEER’S /ESTHETIC AND ARCHITECTURE 9

THREE REMINDERS TO ARCHITECTS :

I. MASS 21

II. SURFACE 33

III. PLAN 43

REGULATING LINES 6 j

EYES WHICH DO NOT SEE*.

I. LINERS 85

II. AIRPLANES IO 5

III. AUTOMOBILES I 29

ARCHITECTURE :

I. THE LESSON OF ROME 149

II. THE ILLUSION OF PLANS 175

III. PURE CREATION OF THE MIND 199

MASS-PRODUCTION HOUSES 22 5

ARCHITECTURE OR REVOLUTION 267

xix

TOWARDS A NEW
ARCHITECTURE

ARGUMENT

THE ENGINEER’S AESTHETIC AND
ARCHITECTURE

>pHE Engineer’s ^Esthetic, and Architecture, are two things
that march together and follow one from the other : the
one being now at its full height, the other in an unhappy state
of retrogression.

The Engineer, inspired by the law of Economy and governed
by mathematical calculation, puts us in accord with universal
law. He achieves harmony.

The Architect, by his arrangement of forms, realizes an
order which is a pure creation of his spirit ; by forms and
shapes he affects our senses to an acute degree and provokes
plastic emotions ; by the relationships which he creates he
wakes profound echoes in us, he gives us the measure of an
order which we feel to be in accordance with that of our
world, he determines the various movements of our heart
and of our understanding ; it is then that we experience
the sense of beauty.

ARGUMENT

THREE REMINDERS TO ARCHITECTS

MASS

Our eyes are constructed to enable us to see forms in
light.

Primary forms are beautiful forms because they can be
clearly appreciated.

Architects to-day no longer achieve these simple forms.

Working by calculation, engineers employ geometrical
forms, satisfying our eyes by their geometry and our under-
standing by their mathematics ; their work is on the direct
line of good art.

SURFACE

A mass is enveloped in its surface, a surface which is divided
up according to the directing and generating lines of the
mass ; and this gives the mass its individuality.

Architects to-day are afraid of the geometrical constituents
of surfaces.

The great problems of modern construction must have a
geometrical solution.

Forced to work in accordance with the strict needs of
exactly determined conditions, engineers make use of generating
and accusing lines in relation to forms. They create limpid
and moving plastic facts.

PLAN

The Plan is the generator.

Without a plan, you have lack of order, and wilfulness.

ARGUMENT

The Plan holds in itself the essence of sensation.

The great problems of to-morrow, dictated by collective
necessities, put the question of cc plan ” in a new form.

Modern life demands, and is waiting for, a new kind of
plan, both for the house and for the city.

REGULATING LINES

An inevitable element of Architecture.

The necessity for order. The regulating line is a guarantee
against wilfulness. It brings satisfaction to the understanding.

The regulating line is a means to an end ; it is not a recipe.
Its choice and the modalities of expression given to it are an
integral part of architectural creation.

EYES WHICH DO NOT SEE

LINERS

A great epoch has begun.

There exists a new spirit.

There exists a mass of work conceived in the new spirit ;
it is to be met with particularly in industrial production.

Architecture is stifled by custom.

The “ styles 55 are a lie.

Style is a unity of principle animating all the work of an
epoch, the result of a state of mind which has its own special
character.

Our own epoch is determining, day by day, its own style.

Our eyes, unhappily, are unable yet to discern it.

ARGUMENT

AIRPLANES

The airplane is the product of close selection.

The lesson of the airplane lies in the logic which governed
the statement of the problem and its realization.

The problem of the house has not yet been stated.

Nevertheless there do exist standards for the dwelling
house.

Machinery contains in itself the factor of economy, which
makes for selection.

The house is a machine for living in.

AUTOMOBILES

We must aim at the fixing of standards in order to face
the problem of perfection.

The Parthenon is a product of selection applied to a
standard.

Architecture operates in accordance with standards.

Standards are a matter of logic, analysis and minute study ;
they are based on a problem which has been well cc stated.”
A standard is definitely established by experiment.

ARCHITECTURE

THE LESSON OF ROME

The business of Architecture is to establish emotional
relationships by means of raw materials.

Architecture goes beyond utilitarian needs.

Architecture is a plastic thing.

ARGUMENT

The spirit of order, a unity of intention.

The sense of relationships ; architecture deals with
quantities.

Passion can create drama out of inert stone.

THE ILLUSION OF PLANS

The Plan proceeds from within to without ; the exterior is
the result of an interior.

The elements of architecture are light and shade, walls
and space.

Arrangement is the gradation of aims, the classification of
intentions.

Man looks at the creation of architecture with his eyes,
which are 5 feet 6 inches from the ground. One can only
deal with aims which the eye can appreciate, and intentions
which take into account architectural elements. If there come
into play intentions which do not speak the language of archi-
tecture, you arrive at the illusion of plans, you transgress the
rules of the Plan through an error in conception, or through
a leaning towards empty show.

PURE CREATION OF THE MIND

Contour and profile 1 are the touchstone of the architect.

Here he reveals himself as artist or mere engineer.

Contour is free of all constraint.

There is here no longer any question of custom, nor of

1 Modenature. I give the nearest equivalent of Le Corbusier’s use of this word. — F. E.

ARGUMENT

tradition, nor of construction nor of adaptation to utilitarian
needs.

Contour and profile are a pure creation of the mind ; they
call for the plastic artist.

MASS-PRODUCTION HOUSES

A great epoch has begun.

There exists a new spirit.

Industry, overwhelming us like a flood which rolls on
towards its destined ends, has furnished us with new tools
adapted to this new epoch, animated by the new spirit.

Economic law inevitably governs our acts and our
thoughts.

The problem of the house is a problem of the epoch. The
equilibrium of society to-day depends upon it. Architecture
has for its first duty, in this period of renewal, that of bringing
about a revision of values, a revision of the constituent elements
of the house.

Mass-production is based on analysis and experiment.

Industry on the grand scale must occupy itself with building
and establish the elements of the house on a mass-production
basis.

We must create the mass-production spirit.

The spirit of constructing mass-production houses.

The spirit of living in mass-production houses.

The spirit of conceiving mass-production houses.

If we eliminate from our hearts and minds all dead concepts
in regard to the house, and look at the question from a critical

ARGUMENT

and objective point of view, we shall arrive at the cc House-
Machine,” the mass-production house, healthy (and morally
so too) and beautiful in the same way that the working tools
and instruments which accompany our existence are beautiful.

Beautiful also with all the animation that the artist’s sensi-
bility can add to severe and pure functioning elements.

ARCHITECTURE OR REVOLUTION

In every field of industry, new problems have presented
themselves and new tools have been created capable of resolving
them. If this new fact be set against the past, then you have
revolution.

In building and construction, mass-production has already
been begun ; in face of new economic needs, mass-production
units have been created both in mass and detail ; and definite
results have been achieved both in detail and in mass. If this
fact be set against the past, then you have revolution, both
in the method employed and in the large scale on which it
has been carried out.

The history of Architecture unfolds itself slowly across
the centuries as a modification of structure and ornament, but
in the last fifty years steel and concrete have brought new
conquests, which are the index of a greater capacity for con-
struction, and of an architecture in which the old codes have
been overturned. If we challenge the past, we shall learn
that “ styles ” no longer exist for us, that a style belonging to
our own period has come about ; and there has been a
Revolution.

ARGUMENT

Our minds have consciously or unconsciously apprehended
these events and new needs have arisen, consciously or uncon-
sciously.

The machinery of Society, profoundly out of gear, oscillates
between an amelioration, of historical importance, and a
catastrophe.

The primordial instinct of every human being is to assure
himself of a shelter. The various classes of workers in society
to-day no longer have dwellings adapted to their needs ; neither the
artisan nor the intellectual.

It is a question of building which is at the root of the social
unrest of to-day : architecture or revolution.

PONT DE GARABIT

THE ENGINEER’S AESTHETIC

AND

ARCHITECTURE

The Engineer’s /. Esthetic and Architecture — two things that march
together and follow one from the other— the one at its full height, the
other in an unhappy state of retrogression.

The Engineer , inspired by the law of Economy and governed by
mathematical calculation , puts us in accord with universal law . He

achieves harmony.

The Architect, by his arrangement of forms, realises an order
which is a pure creation of his spirit ; by forms and shapes he affects
our senses to an acute degree, and provokes plastic emotions ; by the
relationships which he creates he wakes in us profound echoes, he gives
us the measure of an order which we feel to be in accordance with that
of our world, he determines the various movements of our heart and
of our understanding; it is then that we experience the sense of beauty.

THE ENGINEER’S AESTHETIC AND ARCHITECTURE

The Engineer’s ^Esthetic and Architecture— two things
that march together and follow one from the other— the
one at its full height, the other in an unhappy state of
retrogression.

A QUESTION of morality; lack of truth is intolerable,
we perish in untruth.

Architecture is one of the most urgent needs of man, for
the house has always been the indispensable and first tool that
he has forged for himself. Man’s stock of tools marks out the
stages of civilization, the stone age, the bronze age, the iron
age. Tools are the result of successive improvement ; the
effort of all generations is embodied in them. The tool is the
direct and immediate expression of progress ; it gives man
essential assistance and essential freedom also. We throw
the out-of-date tool on the scrap-heap : the carbine, the
culverin, the growler and the old locomotive. This action is
a manifestation of health, of moral health, of morale also ;
it is not right that we should produce bad things because of a
bad tool ; nor is it right that we should waste our energy,
our health and our courage because of a bad tool ; it must
be thrown away and replaced.

But men live in old houses and they have not yet thought
of building houses adapted to themselves. The lair has been
dear to their hearts since all time. To such a degree and so
strongly that they have established the cult of the home. A

TOWARDS A NEW ARCHITECTURE

roof ! then other household gods. Religions have established
themselves on dogmas, the dogmas do not change ; but
civilizations change and religions tumble to dust. Houses
have not changed. But the cult of the house has remained
the same for centuries. The house will also fall to dust.

A man who practises a religion and does not believe in
it is a poor wretch ; he is to be pitied. We are to be pitied
for living in unworthy houses, since they ruin our health
and our morale . It is our lot to have become sedentary
creatures ; our houses gnaw at us in our sluggishness, like a
consumption. We shall soon need far too many sanatoriums.
We are to be pitied. Our houses disgust us ; we fly from
them and frequent restaurants and night clubs ; or we gather
together in our houses gloomily and secretly like wretched
animals ; we are becoming demoralized.

Engineers fabricate the tools of their time. Everything,
that is to say, except houses and moth-eaten boudoirs.

There exists in France a great national school of archi-
tecture, and there are, in every country, architectural schools
of various kinds, to mystify young minds and teach them
dissimulation and the obsequiousness of the toady. National
schools !

Our engineers are healthy and virile, active and useful,
balanced and happy in their work. Our architects are dis-
illusioned and unemployed, boastful or peevish. This is

THE ENGINEER’S AESTHETIC AND ARCHITECTURE 15

because there will soon be nothing more for them to do.
We no longer have the money to erect historical souvenirs.
At the same time, we have got to wash !

Our engineers provide for these things and they will be
our builders.

Nevertheless there does exist this thing called archi-
tecture, an admirable thing, the loveliest of all. A product
of happy peoples and a thing which in itself produces happy
peoples.

The happy towns are those that have an architecture.

Architecture can be found in the telephone and in the
Parthenon. How easily could it be at home in our houses !
Houses make the street and the street makes the town and
the town is a personality which takes to itself a soul, which
can feel, suffer and wonder. How at home architecture could
be in street and town !

The diagnosis is clear.

Our engineers produce architecture, for they employ a
mathematical calculation which derives from natural law, and
their works give us the feeling of HARMONY. The engineer
therefore has his own aesthetic, for he must, in making his
calculations, qualify some of the terms of his equation ; and
it is here that taste intervenes. Now, in handling a mathe-
matical problem, a man is regarding it from a purely abstract
point of view, and in such a state, his taste must follow a
sure and certain path.

TOWARDS A NEW ARCHITECTURE

Architects, emerging from the Schools, those hot-houses
where blue Hortensias and green chrysanthemums are forced,
and where unclean orchids are cultivated, enter into the town
in the spirit of a milkman who should, as it were, sell his milk
mixed with vitriol or poison . 1

People still believe here and there in architects, as they
believe blindly in all doctors. It is very necessary, of course,
that houses should hold together ! It is very necessary to have
recourse to the man of art ! Art, according to Larousse, is
the application of knowledge to the realization of a conception.
Now, to-day, it is the engineer who %nom, who knows the best
way to construct, to heat, to ventilate, to light. Is it not true ?

Our diagnosis is that, to begin at the beginning, the engineer
who proceeds by knowledge shows the way and holds the
truth. It is that architecture, which is a matter of plastic
emotion, should in its own domain BEGIN AT THE BEGINNING
ALSO, AND SHOULD USE THOSE ELEMENTS WHICH ARE CAPABLE
OF AFFECTING OUR SENSES, AND OF REWARDING THE DESIRE
OF our eyes, and should dispose them in such a way THAT
THE SIGHT OF THEM AFFECTS US IMMEDIATELY by their
delicacy or their brutality, their riot or their serenity, their
indifference or their interest ; these elements are plastic
elements, forms which our eyes see clearly and which our
mind can measure. These forms, elementary or subtle, tract-
able or brutal, work physiologically upon our senses (sphere,
cube, cylinder, horizontal, vertical, oblique, etc.), and excite

1 I have not felt It incumbent upon me to modify somewhat rhetorical passages
such as the above. — F. E.

THE ENGINEER'S AESTHETIC AND ARCHITECTURE i 7

them. Being moved, we are able to get beyond the cruder
sensations ; certain relationships are thus born which work
upon our perceptions and put us into a state of satisfaction
(in consonance with the laws of the universe which govern
us and to which all our acts are subjected), in which man can
employ fully his gifts of memory, of analysis, of reasoning
and of creation.

Architecture to-day is no longer conscious of its own
beginnings.

Architects work in “ styles 55 or discuss questions of struc-
ture in and out of season ; their clients, the public, still think
in terms of conventional appearance, and reason on the founda-
tions of an insufficient education. Our external world has been
enormously transformed in its outward appearance and in the
use made of it, by reason of the machine. We have gained
a new perspective and a new social life, but we have not yet
adapted the house thereto.

The time has therefore come to put forward the problem of
the house, of the street and of the town, and to deal with
both the architect and the engineer.

For the architect we have written our c< three reminders.”

Mass which .is the element by which our senses perceive
and measure and are most fully affected.

Surface which is the envelope of the mass and which can
diminish or enlarge the sensation the latter gives us.

Plan which is the generator both of mass and surface
and is that by which the whole is irrevocably fixed.

TOWARDS A NEW ARCHITECTURE

Then, still for the architect, cc REGULATING LINES ” showing
by these one of the means by which architecture achieves
that tangible form of mathematics which gives us such a
grateful perception of order. We wished to set forth facts of
greater value than those in many dissertations on the soul of
stones. We have confined ourselves to the natural philosophy
of the matter, to things that can he known .

We have not forgotten the dweller in the house and the
crowd in the town. We are well aware that a great part of the
present evil state of architecture is due to the client , to the man
who gives the order, who makes his choice and alters it and who
pays. For him we have written “ eyes which DO NOT see.”
We are all acquainted with too many big business men,
bankers and merchants, who tell us : “ Ah, but I am merely
a man of affairs, I live entirely outside the art world, I am a
Philistine.” We protest and tell them : All your energies

are directed towards this magnificent end which is the forging
of the tools of an epoch, and which is creating throughout the
whole world this accumulation of very beautiful things in
which economic law reigns supreme, and mathematical exact-
ness is joined to daring and imagination. That is what you
do ; that, to be exact, is Beauty.”

One can see these same business men, bankers and
merchants, away from their businesses in their own homes,
where everything seems to contradict their real existence-
rooms too small, a conglomeration of useless and disparate
objects, and a sickening spirit reigning over so many shams—
Aubusson, Salon d’Automne, styles of all sorts and absurd

THE ENGINEER’S AESTHETIC AND ARCHITECTURE 19

bric-a-brac. Our industrial friends seem sheepish and shrivelled
like tigers in a cage ; it is very clear that they are happier at
their factories or in their banks. We claim, in the name of
the steamship, of the airplane, and of the motor-car, the right
to health, logic, daring, harmony, perfection.

We shall be understood. These are evident truths. It is
not foolishness to hasten forward a clearing up of things.

Finally, it will be a delight to talk of ARCHITECTURE after
so many grain-stores, workshops, machines and sky-scrapers.
Architecture is a thing of art, a phenomenon of the emotions,
lying outside questions of construction and beyond them. The
purpose of construction is to make things hold together ;
of architecture TO move us. Architectural emotion exists
when the work rings within us in tune with a universe whose
laws we obey, recognize and respect. When certain harmonies
have been attained, the work captures us. Architecture is a
matter of <e harmonies,” it is “ a pure creation of the spirit.”

To-day, painting has outsped the other arts.

It is the first to have attained attunement with the epoch. 1
Modern painting has left on one side wall decoration, tapestry
and the ornamental urn and has sequestered itself in a frame-
flourishing, full of matter, far removed from a distracting
realism ; it lends itself to meditation. Art is no longer anec-
dotal, it is a source of meditation ; after the day’s work it is
good to meditate.

1 I mean, of course, the vital change brought about by cubism and later
researches, and not the lamentable fall from grace which has for the last two years
seized upon painters, distracted by lack of sales and taken to task by critics as little
instructed as sensitive (1921).

TOWARDS A NEW ARCHITECTURE

On the one hand the mass of people look for a decent
dwelling, and this question is of burning importance.

On the other hand the man of initiative, of action, of
thought, the leader, demands a shelter for his meditations
in a quiet and sure spot ; a problem which is indispensable
to the health of specialized people.

Painters and sculptors, champions of the art of to-day,
you who have to bear so much mockery and who suffer so
much indifference, let us purge our houses, give your help
that we may reconstruct our towns. Your works will then
be able to take their place in the framework of the period
and you will everywhere be admitted and understood. Tell
yourselves that architecture has indeed need of your attention.
Do not forget the problem of architecture.

GRAIN ELEVATOR

THREE REMINDERS TO
ARCHITECTS

MASS

Our eyes are constructed to enable us to see forms in light.

Primary forms are beautiful forms because they can be clearly
appreciated.

Architects to-day no longer achieve these simple forms.

Working by calculation , engineers employ geometrical forms ,
satisfying our eyes by their geometry and our understanding by their
mathematics ; their work, I s on the direct line of good art.

THREE REMINDERS TO ARCHITECTS

GRAIN ELEVATOR

A RCHITECTURE has nothing to do with the various
“ styles/’

The styles of Louis XIY, XV, XVI or Gothic, are to
architecture what a feather is on a woman’s head ; it is
sometimes pretty, though not always, and never anything
more.

Architecture has graver ends ; capable of the sublime, it

TOWARDS A NEW ARCHITECTURE

impresses the most brutal instincts by its objectivity ; it calls
into play the highest faculties by its very abstraction. Archi-
tectural abstraction has this about it which is magnificently
peculiar to itself, that while it is rooted, in hard fact it spiritual-
izes it, because the naked fact is nothing more than the material-
ization of a possible idea. The naked fact is a medium for
ideas only by reason of the cc order ” that is applied to it.
The emotions that architecture arouses spring from physical
conditions which are inevitable, irrefutable and to-day
forgotten.

Mass and surface are the elements by which architecture
manifests itself.

Mass and surface are determined by the plan. The plan
is the generator. So much the worse for those who lack
imagination !

THREE REMINDERS TO ARCHITECTS

First Reminder : Mass

Architecture is the masterly, correct and magnificent play
of masses brought together in light. Our eyes are made to
see forms in light ; light and shade reveal these forms ; cubes,
cones, spheres, cylinders or pyramids are the great primary
forms which light reveals to advantage ; the image of these
is distinct and tangible within us and without ambiguity.
It is for that reason that these are beautiful forms , the most
beautiful forms. Everybody is agreed as to that, the child,
the savage and the metaphysician. It is of the very nature of
the plastic arts.

Egyptian, Greek or Roman architecture is an architecture
of prisms, cubes and cylinders, pyramids or spheres : the
Pyramids, the Temple of Luxor, the Parthenon, the Coliseum,
Hadrian’s Villa.

TOWARDS A NEW ARCHITECTURE

Gothic architecture is not, fundamentally, based on spheres,
cones and cylinders. Only the nave is an expression of a
simple form, but of a complex geometry of the second order
(intersecting arches). It is for that reason that a cathedral is
not very beautiful and that we search in it for compensations
of a subjective kind outside plastic art. A cathedral interests
us as the ingenious solution of a difficult problem, but a
problem of which the postulates have been badly stated because
they do not proceed from the great primary forms. The
cathedral is not a plastic wor\; it is a drama; a fight against
the force of gravity, which is a sensation of a sentimental nature.

The Pyramids, the Towers of Babylon, the Gates of Samar-
kand, the Parthenon, the Coliseum, the Pantheon, the Pont
du Gard, Santa Sophia, the Mosques of Stamboul, the Tower

THREE REMINDERS TO ARCHITECTS 31

of Pisa, the Cupolas of Brunelleschi and of Michael Angelo,
the Pont-Royal, the Invalides — all these belong to Architecture.

The Gare du Quai d’Orsay, the Grand Palais do not belong
to Architecture.

The architects of to-day, lost in the sterile backwaters of
their plans, their foliage, their pilasters and their lead roofs,
have never acquired the conception of primary masses. They
were never taught that at the Schools.

Not in pursuit of an architectural idea, hut simply guided by
the results of calculation (derived from the principles which govern
our universe) and the conception of A living organism, the
engineers of to-day make use of the primary elements and, by
co-ordinating them in accordance with the rules, provoke in us
architectural emotions and thus make the work, °f man r ^g in
unison with universal order .

Thus we have the A.merican grain elevators and factories, the
magnificent first-fruits of the new age . the American
engineers overwhelm with their calculations our
expiring architecture.

COURTYARD

THREE REMINDERS TO
ARCHITECTS

A mass is enveloped in its surface, a surface which is divided
up according to the directing and generating lines of the mass ; and
this gives the mass its individuality .

Architects to-day are afraid of the geometrical constituents of
surfaces.

The great problems of modern construction must have a geometrical
solution.

Forced to worh^ in accordance with the strict needs of exactly
determined conditions, engineers make use of generating and accusing
lines in relation to forms. They create limpid and moving plastic
facts .

THREE REMINDERS TO ARCHITECTS

A RCHITECTURE has nothing to do with the various
“ styles.”

The styles of Louis XIV, XV, XVI or Gothic, are to
architecture what a feather is on a woman’s head. ; it is
sometimes pretty, though not always, and never anything
more.

Second Reminder : Surface

Architecture being the masterly, correct and magnificent
play of masses brought together in light, the task of the archi-
tect is to vitalize the surfaces which clothe these masses, but
in such a way that these surfaces do not become parasitical,
eating up the mass and absorbing it to their own advantage :
the sad story of our present-day work.

To leave a mass intact in the splendour of its form in light,

TOWARDS A NEW ARCHITECTURE

1 1

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THREE REMINDERS TO ARCHITECTS

but, on the other hand, to appropriate its surface for needs
which are often utilitarian, is to force oneself to discover in
this unavoidable dividing up of the surface the accusing and

generating lines of the form. In other words, an architectural
structure is a house, a temple or a factory. The surface of the
temple or the factory is in most cases a wall with holes for
doors and windows ; these holes are often the destruction
of form ; they must be made an accentuation of form. If the

40 TOWARDS A NEW ARCHITECTURE

essentials of architecture lie in spheres, cones and cylinders,
the generating and accusing lines of these forms are on a
basis of pure geometry. But this geometry terrifies the archi-
tects of to-day. Architects, to-day, do not dare to construct
a Pitti Palace or a rue de Rivoli ; they construct a boulevard
Raspail . 1

Let us base our present observations on the ground of
actual needs : what we need is towns laid out in a useful
manner whose general mass shall be noble (town planning).
We have need of streets in which cleanliness, suitability to the
necessities of dwellings, the application of the spirit of mass-
production and industrial organisation, the grandeur of the
idea, the serenity of the whole effect, shall ravish the spirit and
bring with them the charm that a happy conception can give.

1 Or a Regent Street. — F. E.

S if

THREE REMINDERS TO ARCHITECTS

To model the plain surface of a primary and simple form is
to bring into play automatically a rivalry with the mass itself :
here you have a contradiction of intention-the boulevard Raspail.

To model the surface of masses which are in themselves
complicated and have been brought into harmony is to modu-
late and still remain within the mass : a rare problem — the
Invalides of Mansard.

A problem of our age and of contemporary aesthetics :
everything tends to the restoration of simple masses : streets,
factories, the large stores, all the problems which will present
themselves to-morrow under a synthetic form and under
general aspects that no other age has ever known. Surfaces,
pitted by holes in accordance with the necessities of their
destined use, should borrow the generating and accusing
lines of these simple forms. These accusing lines are in
practice the chessboard or grill— American factories. But this
geometry is a source of terror.

Not in pursuit of an architectural idea, but guided simply
by the necessities of an imperative demand, the tendency of
the engineers of to-day is towards the generating and accusing
lines of masses ; they show us the way and create plastic facts,
clear and limpid, giving rest to our eyes and to the mind the
pleasure of geometric forms.

Such are the factories, the reassuring first fruits of the
new age.

The engineers of to-day find themselves in accord with
the principles that Bramante and Raphael had applied a long
time ago.

42 TOWARDS A NEW ARCHITECTURE

N.B. Let us listen to the counsels of American engineers.
But let us beware of American architects. For proof :

THREE REMINDERS TO
ARCHITECTS

III

PLAN

THE ACROPOLIS

A view which shows the Parthenon, the Erechtheum, and the statue of
Athena in front of the Propylea. It should not be forgotten that the site of
the Acropolis is very up and down, with considerable variations in level which
have been used to furnish imposing bases or plinths to the buildings The
whole thing being out of square, provides richly varied vistas of a subtle kind ;
the different masses of the buildings, being asymmetrically arranged, create an
intense rhythm. The whole composition is massive, elastic, living, terribly
sharp and keen and dominating.

The Plan is the generator.

Without a plan, you have lack, of order, and wilfulness .

The Plan holds in itself the essence of sensation.

The great problems of to-morrow, dictated by collective necessities ,
put the question of “ plan ” in a new form.

Modern life demands, and is waiting for, a new kind of plan
both for the house and for the city.

THREE REMINDERS TO ARCHITECTS

A RCHITECTURE has nothing to do with the “ styles.”

It brings into play the highest faculties by its very
abstraction. Architectural abstraction has this about it which
is magnificently peculiar to itself, that while it is rooted in
hard fact, it spiritualises it. The naked fact is a medium
for an idea only by reason of the cc order ” that is applied
to it.

Mass and surface are the elements by which architecture
manifests itself. Mass and surface are determined by the
plan. The plan is the generator. So much the worse for
those who lack imagination !

Third Reminder : The Plan

The plan is the generator.

The eye of the spectator finds itself looking at a site com-
posed of streets and houses. It receives the impact of the
masses which rise up around it. If these masses are of a formal
kind and have not been spoilt by unseemly variations, if the
disposition of their grouping expresses a clean rhythm and not
an incoherent agglomeration, if the relationship of mass to
space is in just proportion, the eye transmits to the brain
co-ordinated sensations and the mind derives from these
satisfactions of a high order : this is architecture.

The eye observes, in a large interior, the multiple surfaces
of walls and vaults ; the cupolas determine the large spaces ;

TOWARDS A NEW ARCHITECTURE

the vaults display their own surfaces ; the pillars and the
walls adjust themselves in accordance with comprehensible
reasons. The whole structure rises from its base and is
developed in accordance with a rule which is written on the
ground in the plan : noble forms, variety of form, unity of
the geometric principle. A profound projection of harmony :
this is architecture.

TYPE OF HINDOO TEMPLE

The towers make a rhythm in space.

The plan is at its basis. Without plan there can be neither
grandeur of aim and expression, nor rhythm, nor mass, nor
coherence. Without plan we have the sensation, so insupport-
able to man, of shapelessness, of poverty, of disorder, of wilful-
ness.

A plan calls for the most active imagination. It calls for
the most severe discipline also. The plan is what determines
everything ; it is the decisive moment. A plan is not a pretty
thing to be drawn, like a Madonna face ; it is an austere

THREE REMINDERS TO ARCHITECTS

abstraction ; it is nothing more than an algebrization and a
dry-looking thing. The work of the mathematician remains
none the less one of the highest activities of the human
spirit.

SANTA SOPHIA, CONSTANTINOPLE

The plan influences the whole structure : the geometrical laws on which it is
based and their various modulations are developed in every part of the building ,

Arrangement is an appreciable rhythm which reacts on
every human being in the same way.

The plan bears within itself a primary and pre-determined
rhythm : the work is developed in extent and in height follow-
ing the prescriptions of the plan, with results which can range
from the simplest to the most complex, all coming within the

5 o TOWARDS A NEW ARCHITECTURE

same law. Unity of law is the law of a good plan : a simple
law capable of infinite modulation.

Rhythm is a state of equilibrium which proceeds either

TEMPLE AT THEBES

The plan is organised, in accordance with the axis of the main entrance : the
Avenue of Sphinxes, the pylons , the courtyard and peristyle, the sanctuary.

from symmetries, simple or complex, or from delicate
balancings. Rhythm is an equation ; Equalization (symmetry,
repetition) {Egyptian and Hindoo temples ) ; compensation
(movement of contrary parts) ( the Acropolis at Athens) ;
modulation (the development of an original plastic invention)

THREE REMINDERS TO ARCHITECTS

5 *

( Santa Sophia ). So many reactions, differing in the main for
every individual, in spite of the unity of aim which gives the
rhythm, and the state of equilibrium. So we get the astonish-
ing diversity found in great epochs, a diversity which is the
result of architectural principle and not of the play of decoration.

The plan carries in itself the very essence of sensation.

PALACE IN AMMAN (SYRIA)

But the sense of the plan has been lost for the last hundred
years. The great problems of to-morrow, dictated by collective
necessities, based upon statistics and realized by mathematical
calculation, once more revive the problem of the plan. When
once the indispensable breadth of vision, which mmst be
brought to town planning, has been realized, we shall enter
upon a period that no epoch has yet known. Towns must be

5 2

TOWARDS A NEW ARCHITECTURE

THE ACROPOLIS, ATHENS

The apparent lack of order in the plan could only deceive the unlearned. The
balance of the parts is in no way a paltry one. It is determined by the famous
landscape which stretches from the Pirceus to Mount Pentelicus. The scheme
was designed to be seen from a distance : the axes follow the valley and the false
right angles are contrived with the skill of a first-rate stage manager. The
Acropolis set on its rock and on its sustaining walls , seen from afar appears as
one solid block. The buildings are massed together in accordance with the
incidence of their varying plans.

conceived and planned throughout their entire extent in
same way as were planned the temples of the East and as
Invalides or the Versailles of Louis XIV were laid out.

THREE REMINDERS TO ARCHITECTS

The technical equipment of this epoch — the technique of
finance and the technique of construction — is ready to carry
out this task.

Tony Gamier, backed by Herriot at Lyons, planned his

In his important studies on the Manufacturing Town , Tony Gamier has taken
for granted certain possibilities of social development , not yet brought to pass,
which would permit of methods of normal expansion of towns . The public
would have complete control of all building sites, A house for each family :
only one half of the area would be occupied by buildings, the other half being for
public use and planted with trees : hedges and fences would not be allowed. In
this way the town could be traversed in every direction, quite independently of the
streets, which there would be no need for a pedestrian to use . The town would

really be like a great park.

“ industrial quarter ” {Cite). It is an attempt at an ordered
scheme and a fusion of utilitarian and plastic solutions. One
fixed rule governing the units employed gives, in every quarter
of the town, the same choice of essential masses and deter-
mines the intervening spaces in accordance with practical
necessities and the biddings of a poetical sense peculiar to the

TOWARDS A NEW ARCHITECTURE

architect. Though we may reserve our judgment as to the
relationship of the various zones of this industrial city, one
experiences here the beneficent results of order. Where order
reigns, well-being begins. By the happy creation of a system
of arrangement of the various plots, even the residential
quarters for artisans take on a high architectural significance.
Such is the result of a plan.

In the present state of marking time (for modern town
planning is not yet born), the most noble quarters of our
towns are inevitably the manufacturing ones where the basis
of grandeur and style — namely, geometry — results from the
problem itself. The plan has been a weak feature, and is
still so to-day. True, an admirable order reigns in the
interior of markets and workshops, has dictated the structure
of machines and governs their movements, and conditions
each gesture of a gang of workmen ; but dirt infects their
surroundings, and incoherence ran riot when the rule and
square dictated the placing of the buildings, spreading them
about in a crazy, costly and dangerous way.

It would have been enough if there had been a plan. And
one day we shall have a plan for our needs. The extent of the
evil will bring us to this.

One day Auguste Perret created the phrase : “ The City of
Towers. 5 ' A glittering epithet which aroused the poet in us.
A word which struck the note of the moment because the
fact itself is imminent ! Almost unknown to us, the cc great
city 55 is engendering its plan. This plan may well be a gigantic
affair, since the great city is a rising tide. It is time that we

TOWARDS A NEW ARCHITECTURE

LE CORBUSIER, 1920. A CITY OF TOWERS

A project for Apartments or Flats , built as towers of 60 storeys and rising to
a height of 700 feet ; the distance between the towers would be from 250 to 300
yards. The towers would be from 5 00 to 600 feet through their greatest
breadth. In spite of the great area devoted to the surrounding parks , the
density of a normal town of to-day is multiplied many times over. It is
evident that such buildings would necessarily be devoted exclusively to business
offices and that their proper place would therefore be in the centre of great cities ,
with a view to eliminating the appalling congestion of the main arteries. Family
life would hardly be at home in them, with their prodigious mechanism of lifts.
The figures are terrifying, pitiless but magnificent : giving each employee a
superficial area of 10 sq. yds., a skyscraper 650 feet in breadth would house
40,000 people.

A CITY OF TOWERS

This section shows on the left how dust, smells, and noise stifle our towns of
to-day. The towers, on the other hand, are far removed from all this and set in
clean air amidst trees and grass. Indeed the whole town is “ verdure clad.”

THREE REMINDERS TO ARCHITECTS

LE CORBUSIER, 1923. A CITY OF TOWERS

The towers are placed amidst gardens and playing-fields. The main arteries ,

with their motor-tracks built over them, allow of easy, or rapid, or very rapid
circulation of traffic.

should repudiate the existing lay-out of our towns, in which
the congestion of buildings grows greater, interlaced by
narrow streets full of noise, petrol fumes and dust ; and
where on each storey the windows open wide on to this foul
confusion. The great towns have become too dense for the
security of their inhabitants and yet they are not sufficiently
dense to meet the new needs of cc modern business.’ 5

If we take as our basis the vital constructional event which
the American sky-scraper has proved to be, it will be sufficient
to bring together at certain points (relatively distant) the great
density of our modern populations and to build at these points
enormous constructions of 60 storeys high. Reinforced con-

TOWARDS A NEW ARCHITECTURE

Crete and steel allow of this audacity and lend themselves in
particular to a certain development of the facade by means of
which all the windows have an uninterrupted view : in this
way, in the future, inside courts and “ wells ” will no longer
exist. Starting from the fourteenth storey you have absolute
calm and the purest air.

In these towers which will shelter the worker, till now
stifled in densely packed quarters and congested streets, all
the necessary services, following the admirable practice in
America, will be assembled, bringing efficiency and economy
of time and effort, and as a natural result the peace of mind
which is so necessary. These towers, rising up at great distances
from one another, will give by reason of their height the same
accommodation that has up till now been spread out over the
superficial area ; they will leave open enormous spaces in
which would run, well away from them, the noisy arterial
roads, full of a traffic which becomes increasingly rapid. At
the foot of the towers would stretch the parks : trees covering
the whole town. The setting out of the towers would form
imposing avenues ; there indeed is an architecture worthy of
our time.

Auguste Perret set forth the principle of the City of Towers ;
but he has not produced any designs. On the other hand he
allowed himself to be interviewed by a reporter of the cc Intran-
sigeant ” and to be so far carried away as to swell out his
conception beyond reasonable limits. In this way he threw
a veil of dangerous futurism over what was a sound idea.
The reporter noted that enormous bridges would link each

THREE REMINDERS TO ARCHITECTS

tower to the next ; for what purpose ? The arteries for traffic
would be placed far away from the houses ; and the inhabi-
tants, free to disport themselves in the parks among trees
planted in ordered patterns, or on the grass or in the places
of amusement, would never have the slightest desire to take
their exercise on giddy bridges, with nothing at all to do when
they got there ! The reporter would have it also that the

LE CORBUSIER, I9I5. TOWNS BUILT ON PILES

The ground level of the town is raised from iz to 1 6 feet by means of concrete
piles which serve as foundations for the houses. The actual “ ground ” of the
town is a sort of floor, the streets and pavements as it were bridges, beneath
this floor and directly accessible are placed all the main services, at present
buried in the ground and inaccessible — water, gas, electricity, telephone wires,
sewers, etc.

town would be raised on innumerable piles of reinforced con-
crete carrying the streets at a height of 65 feet (6 storeys if you
please !) and linking the towers one to another. These piles
would leave an immense space underneath the town in which
would be placed the gas and water mains and the sewers, the
viscera of the city. Perret had never set out his plan, and the
idea could not be carried further without a plan.

I had myself put forward this idea of using piles a long
time before Auguste Perret, and it was a conception of a

TOWARDS A NEW ARCHITECTURE

much less grandiose character ; but it was capable of meeting
a genuine need. I applied it to the existing type of town
such as the Paris of to-day. Instead of forming foundations
by excavating and constructing thick foundation walls, instead
of digging up atid digging up again the roadways in order to
bury in them (a labour of Sisyphus) the gas and water mains,
the sewers and the Tubes, with constant repairs to execute,
it would be agreed that any new districts should be con-
structed at ground level, the foundations being replaced by
the necessary number of concrete piles ; these would have
carried the ground floor of the houses and, by a system of
corbelling, the pavements and the roadways.

Within this space so gained, of a height of from 12 to 18
feet, would run heavy lorries, and the Tubes replacing the
encumbrance of tramways, and so on, with a direct service to
points immediately below the buildings. This complete net-
work of traffic, working independently of that reserved for
pedestrians and quick-moving vehicles, would be a pure gain
and would have its own geography independent of any obstruc-
tion due to the houses : an ordered forest of pillars in the
midst of which the town would exchange its merchandise,
bring in its food supplies, and perform all the slow and clumsy
tasks which to-day impede the speed of traffic.

Cafes and places for recreation would no longer be that
fungus which eats up the pavements of Paris : they would be
transferred to the flat roofs, as would be all commerce of a
luxury kind (for is it not really illogical that one entire super-
ficies of a town should be unused and reserved for a flirtation

THREE REMINDERS TO ARCHITECTS 61

between the tiles and the stars ?). Short passage-ways in the
shape of bridges above the ordinary streets would enable
foot traffic to get about among these newly gained quarters
consecrated to leisure amidst flowers and foliage.

The result of this conception would be nothing less than
a triplication of the traffic area of a town ; it was capable of
realization since it corresponded to a need , was less costly
and more rational than the aberrations of to-day. It was a
reasonable notion, given the old framework of our towns,
just as the conception of the City of Towers will prove a
reasonable idea, as regards the towns of to-morrow.

Here, then, we have a lay-out of streets which would bring
about an entirely new system of town planning and would
provide a radical reform in the tenanted house or apartment ; this
imminent reform, necessitated by the transformation of domestic
economy, demands a new type of plan for dwelling-houses,
and an entirely new organisation of services corresponding
to modern life in a great city. Here again the plan is the
generator ; without it poverty, disorder, wilfulness reign
supreme.

Instead of our towns being laid out in massive quadrangles,
with the streets in narrow trenches walled in by seven- storeyed
buildings set perpendicular on the pavement and enclosing
unhealthy courtyards, airless and sunless wells, our new lay-
out, employing the same area and housing the same number of
people, would show great blocks of houses with successive
set-backs, stretching along arterial avenues. No more court-
yards, but flats opening on every side to air and light, and

TOWARDS A NEW ARCHITECTURE

6 2

LE CORBUSIER, 1920. STREETS WITH SET-BACKS

Vast airy and sunlit spaces on which all windows would open. Gardens and
playgrounds around the buildings. Simple facades with immense bays. The
successive projections give play of light and shade , and a feeling of richness is
achieved by the scale of the main lines of the design and by the vegetation seen
against the geometrical background of the fagades. Obviously we have here , as
in the case of the City of Towers, a question of enterprise on a huge financial
scale, capable of undertaking the construction of entire quarters. A street
such as this would be designed by a single architect to obtain unity, grandeur,
dignity and economy.

LE CORBUSIER, I920. STREETS WITH SET-BACKS

THREE REMINDERS TO ARCHITECTS 63

looking, not on the puny trees of our boulevards of to-day,
but upon green sward, sports grounds and abundant plantations
of trees.

The jutting prows of these great blocks would break up the
long avenues at regular intervals. The various set-backs would
promote the play of light and shade, so necessary to architectural
expression.

Reinforced concrete has brought about a revolution in the
aesthetics of construction. By suppressing the roof and replacing
it by terraces, reinforced concrete is leading us to a new aesthetic
of the plan, hitherto unknown. These set-backs and recessions
are quite possible and will, in the future, lead to a play of
half-lights and of heavy shade with the accent running not from
top to bottom, but horizontally from left to right.

This is a modification of the first importance in the aesthetic
of the plan ; it has not yet been realized ; but we shall be wise
to bear this in our minds, in considering projects for the
extension of our towns.

* * *

We are living in a period of reconstruction and of adap-
tation to new social and economic conditions. In rounding
this Cape Horn the new horizons before us will only recover
the grand line of tradition by a complete revision of the methods
in vogue and by the fixing of a new basis of construction
established in logic.

In architecture the old bases of construction are dead.
We shall not rediscover the truths of architecture until new
bases have established a logical ground for every architectural

LE CORBUSIER AND PIERRE JEANNERET. A ROOF GARDEN ON A
PRIVATE HOUSE AT AUTEUIL

THE PORTE SAINT-DENIS (BLONDEL)

REGULATING LINES

fSEi*

An inevitable element of Architecture.

The necessity for order. The regulating line is a guarantee against
wilfulness. It brings satisfaction to the understanding.

The regulating line is a means to an end ; it is not a recipe.
Its choice and the modalities of expression given to it are an integral
part of architectural creation.

REGULATING LINES

T)RIMITIYE man has brought his chariot to a stop, he
A decides that here shall be his native soil. He chooses a
glade, he cuts down the trees which are too close, he levels the
earth around ; he opens up the road which will carry him to
the river or to those of his tribe whom he has just left ; he
drives in the stakes which are to steady his tent. He sur-
rounds this tent with a palisade in which he arranges a
doorway. The road is as straight as he can manage it with
his implements, his arms and his time. The pegs of his tent
describe a square, a hexagon or an octagon. The palisade
forms a rectangle whose four angles are equal. The door of
his hut is on the axis df the enclosure — and the door of the
enclosure faces exactly the door of the hut.

The men of the tribe have decided to form a shelter for
their god. They place him in a spot where they have made
a clearing, properly laid out ; they put him under cover in a
substantial hut and they drive in the pegs of the hut to form
a square, a hexagon, or an octagon. They protect the hut by
a solid palisade and drive in the pegs to take the shrouding of
the ropes attached to the tall posts of the fence. They mark
out the space to be reserved for the priests and set up the
altar and the vessels of sacrifice. They open up an entrance
in the palisade and they place it on the axis of the door of the
sanctuary.

You may see, in some archeological work, the representa-
tion of this hut, the representation of this sanctuary : it is

7°

TOWARDS A NEW ARCHITECTURE

Zh,

COUPE

A PRIMITIVE TEMPLE

A. Entrance.

B. Portico.

C. Peristyle.

D. Sanctuary.

E. Instruments of worship.

F. Vase of oblation.

G. Altar.

the plan of a house, or the plan of a temple. It is the same
spirit that one finds again in the Pompeian house. It is the
spirit indeed of the Temple of Luxor.

There is no such thing as primitive man ; there are
primitive resources. The idea is constant, in full sway from
the beginning.

Note in these plans that they are governed by elementary
mathematical calculation. They are the product of measure-
ment. In order to construct well and distribute your efforts
to advantage, in order to obtain solidity and utility in the
work, units of measure are the first condition of all. The

REGULATING LINES

builder takes as his measure what is easiest and most constant,
the tool that he is least likely to lose : his pace, his foot, his
elbow, his finger.

In order to construct well and distribute his efforts to
advantage, to obtain solidity and utility in the work, he has
taken measures, he has adopted a unit of measurement, he
has regulated his work^ he has brought in order. For, all
around him, the forest is in disorder with its creepers, its
briars and the tree-trunks which impede him and paralyse his
efforts.

He has imposed order by means of measurement. In order
to get his measurement he has taken his pace, his foot, his
elbow or his finger. By imposing the order of his foot or his

TOWARDS A NEW ARCHITECTURE

arm, he has created a unit which regulates the whole work ;
and this work is on his own scale, to his own proportion,
comfortable for him, to his measure . It is on the human
scale. It is in harmony with him : that is the main point.

But in deciding the form of the enclosure, the form of
the hut, the situation of the altar and its accessories, he has
had by instinct recourse to right angles— axes, the square,
the circle. For he could not create anything otherwise which
would give him the feeling that he was creating. For all
these things — axes, circles, right angles— are geometrical truths,
and give results that our eye can measure and recognize ;
whereas otherwise there would be only chance, irregularity
and capriciousness. Geometry is the language of man.

But in deciding the relative distances of the various objects,
he has discovered rhythms, rhythms apparent to the eye and
clear in their relations with one another. And these rhythms
are at the very root of human activities. They resound in
man by an organic inevitability, the same fine inevitability
which causes the tracing out of the Golden Section by children,
old men, savages and the learned.

A unit gives measure and unity ; a regulating line is a
basis of construction and a satisfaction.

5*5 ijj

Is it not true that most architects to-day have forgotten
that great architecture is rooted in the very beginnings of
humanity and that it is a direct function of human instinct ?

When one looks at the little houses of the Paris suburbs,
the villas on the Normandy dunes, the modern boulevards

REGULATING LINES

and the International Exhibitions, do they not convince us
that architects are inhuman creatures, outside the common
order, removed from our own nature and labouring perhaps
for some other planet ?

It is because they have been taught a strange calling which
consists in making other people — masons, carpenters and
joiners— perform miracles of perseverance, care and skill in
order to erect and stick together elements (roofs, walls,
windows, doors, etc.) which have nothing in common and
which have in truth for aim and consequence that of being
designed for no useful purpose whatever.

SfS ifc

For this reason, the world is unanimous in considering as
dangerous gas-bags, shirkers, incapables, dull and hidebound
characters, the one or two people who have grasped the lesson
of primitive man in his glade, and who claim that there do
exist such things as regulating lines : 6 ' 6 With your regulating
lines you kill imagination, you make a god of a recipe. ”

cc But all earlier epochs have employed this necessary
instrument.”

“ It is not true, you have invented it ; you are a maniac.”

“ But the past has left us proofs, iconographical docu-
ments, steles, slabs, incised stones, parchments, manuscripts,
printed matter. . . .”

^ »f» ^

Architecture is the first manifestation of man creating his
own universe, creating it in the ' image of nature, submitting
to the laws of nature, the laws which govern our own nature,

TOWARDS A NEW ARCHITECTURE

our universe. The laws of gravity, of statics and of dynamics,
impose themselves by a reductio ad absurdum : everything
must hold together or it will collapse.

A supreme determinism illuminates for us the creations
of nature and gives us the security of something poised and
reasonably made, of something infinitely modulated, evolved,
varied and unified.

The primordial physical laws are simple and few in number.
The moral laws are simple and few in number.

* * *

The man of to-day planes to perfection a board with a
planing machine, in a few seconds. The man of yesterday
planed a board reasonably well with a plane. Very primitive
man squared a board very badly with a flint or a knife. Very
primitive man employed a unit of measurement and regulating
lines in order to make his task easier. The Greek, the Egyptian,
Michaelangelo or Blondel employed regulating lines in order
to correct their work and for the satisfaction of their artist’s
sense and of their mathematical thought. The man of to-day
employs nothing at all and the result is the boulevard RaspaiL
But he proclaims that he is a free poet and that his instincts
suffice ; but these can only express themselves by means of
tricks learnt in the schools. A lyrical poet let loose with a
halter round his neck, a man who knows things, but only
things that he has neither discovered for himself nor even
checked, a man who has lost, through all the teaching he has
received, the ingenuous and vital energy of the child who
never tires of asking “ Why ? ”

REGULATING LINES

A regulating line is an assurance against capriciousness :
it is a means of verification which can ratify all work created
in a fervour, the schoolboy’s rule of nine, the Q.E.D. of the
mathematician.

The regulating line is a satisfaction of a spiritual order
which leads to the pursuit of ingenious and harmonious
relations. It confers on the work the quality of rhythm.

The regulating line brings in this tangible form of mathe-
matics which gives the reassuring perception of order. The
choice of a regulating line fixes the fundamental geometry
of the work ; it fixes therefore one of the “ fundamental
characters.” The choice of the regulating line is one of the
decisive moments of inspiration, it is one of the vital operations
of architecture.

* * *

Here are regulating lines which have served to make very
beautiful things and which are the very reason why these
things are so beautiful.

FROM THE MARBLE SLAB FOUND IN 1 8 82 :

FACADE OF THE ARSENAL OF THE PIR^US

76 TOWARDS A NEW ARCHITECTURE

The facade of the Arsenal of the Piraeus is “ regulated 55
by a few simple divisions which give the proportion of the
area to the height and fix the placing of the doors and their
dimensions in intimate relationship with the actual proportions
of the facade.

EXTRACT FROM A BOOK BY DIEULAFOY :

ACH^MENIAN CUPOLAS

The great Achasmenian cupolas form one of the most
subtle conclusions of geometry. Once the conception of the
cupola was established in accordance with the poetical needs

REGULATING LINES

of this race and of this epoch, and in accordance with the
static data of the constructive principles applied to it, the
regulating line comes in to rectify, correct, give point to and
pull together all the parts on the same unifying principle, that
of the triangle 3, 4, 5, which develops its effects from the
portico right up to the summit of the vault.

REGULATING LINES APPLIED TO NOTRE DAME, PARIS :

NOTRE DAME, PARIS

The determinant surface of the Cathedral is based on the
square and the circle.

7 b

TOWARDS A NEW ARCHITECTURE

The placing of the right angle has come into play to deter-
mine the intentions of Michaelangelo, causing the same principle,
which fixes the chief divisions of the wings and of the main
building, to govern the detail of the wings, the slope of the
staircases, the placing of the windows, the height of the
basement, etc.

The work is conceived in regard to its situation, and its
enveloping mass has been brought into association with the
volume and space of its surroundings ; it heaps itself together.

REGULATING LINES SHOWN ON A PHOTOGRAPH OF THE

CAPITOL :

THE CAPITOL, ROME

REGULATING LINES

is concentrated, is a unit, expresses the same law throughout
and becomes a massive thing.

EXTRACT FROM BLONDEL'S OWN NOTES ON THE
PORTE SAINT DENIS

(See the illustration at the beginning of this section):

The principal mass is fixed, the opening of the bay is
sketched in. A bold regulating line, on the unit of 3, divides
the ensemble of the arch, and the various other parts of the
work, as to height and breadth, and governs everything
according to the same unit of 3.

THE PETIT TRIANON:

THE PETIT TRIANON, VERSAILLES

Placing of the right angle.

TOWARDS A NEW ARCHITECTURE

CONSTRUCTION OF A VILLA. 1916 :

The general mass of the facades, both front and rear, is
based on the same angle (A) which determines a diagonal
whose many parallels and their perpendiculars give the measure

(

for correcting the secondary elements, doors, windows, panels,
etc., down to the smallest detail.

This villa of small dimensions, seen in the midst of other
buildings erected without a rule, gives the effect of being
more monumental, and of another order.

LE CORBUSIER, 1916. A VILLA, BACK ELEVATION

THE “FLANDRE” (CIE. TRANS ATLANTIQUE)

EYES WHICH DO NOT SEE

LINERS

A great epoch has begun.

There exists a new spirit.

There exists a mass of won \ conceived in the new spirit ; it is to
be met with particularly in industrial production.

Architecture is stifled by custom.

The (< styles ” are a lie.

Style is a unity of principle animating all the worh^ of an epoch ,
the result of a state of mind which has its own special character.

Our own epoch is determining, day by day, its own style.

Our eyes, unhappily, are unable yet to discern it.

EYES WHICH DO NOT SEE

There is a new spirit: it is a spirit of construction and of synthesis guided
by a clear conception.

Whatever may be thought of it, it animates to-day the greater part of human
activity.

A GREAT EPOCH IS BEGINNING

Programme of l’ Esprit Nouveau.

No. 1. October 1920.

Nobody to-day can deny the aesthetic which is disengaging itself from the
creations of modern industry. More and more buildings and machines are growing
up, in which the proportions, the play of their masses and the materials used
are of such a kind that many of them are real works of art, for they are based
on “number,” that is to say, on order. Now, the specialized persons who make
up the world of industry and business and who live, therefore, in this virile
atmosphere where indubitably lovely works are created, will tell themselves that
they are far removed from any aesthetic activity. They are wrong, for they are
among the most active creators of contemporary (esthetics . Neither artists nor business
men take this into account. It is in general artistic production that the style
of an epoch is found and not, as is too often supposed, in certain productions
of an ornamental kind, mere superfluities which overload the system of thought
which alone furnishes the elements of a style. Grotto-work does not make Louis
Quinze, the lotus is not the Egyptian style, etc., etc.

From a tract issued by

V Esprit Nouveau.

TOWARDS A NEW ARCHITECTURE

T HE “ decorative arts ” are going strong ! After 30 years
of underground work they are at their height. Enthusiastic
commentators talk of regenerating French art! All we need
remember of this adventure (which will finish badly) is that
something more is being born than a rebirth of decoration :
a new epoch is replacing a dying one. Machinery, a new factor
in human affairs, has aroused a new spirit. An epoch creates
its own architecture, and this is the clear image of a system
of thought. During the topsy-turvydom of this critical period,
till the arrival of a new age with its ideas set in order, clear
and lucid, and with definite desires, decorative art was like the
straw which drowning men are said to clutch at in a storm.
A vain refuge ! Let us remember of this adventure that
decorative art at least provided a good opportunity to unload
the past and to feel our way once more towards the spirit of
architecture. The spirit of architecture can only result from
a particular condition of material things and a particular con-
dition of mind. It would seem that events have succeeded
one another sufficiently rapidly for a state of mind belonging
to the period to assert itself and for the spirit of architecture
to reach a formula. Even if the decorative arts are now at
the dangerous height which goes before a fall, we may still

EYES WHICH DO NOT SEE 9 i

say that men’s minds to-day have been stirred up to remember
what it is they aspire to. We may well believe that the appointed
time of architecture has come.

M. PAUL VERA: TAIL PIECE

The Greeks, the Romans, the Grand Siecle, Pascal and
Descartes, wrongly adduced as witnesses in favour of the
decorative arts, have enlightened our judgment, and we now
find ourselves immersed in architecture ; architecture which is
everything— but is not the <c decorative arts.”

Tail pieces and garlands, exquisite ovals where triangular
doves preen themselves or one another, boudoirs embellished
with C£ poufs ” in gold and black velvet, are now no more
than the intolerable witnesses to a dead spirit. These sanc-
tuaries stifling with elegancies, or on the other hand with the
follies of “ Peasant Art,” are an offence.

We have acquired a taste for fresh air and clear daylight.

* * *

Engineers unknown to the world at large, mechanics in

9 Z

TOWARDS A NEW ARCHITECTURE

THE CUNARDER “ AQUITANIA,” WHICH CARRIES 3,600 PERSONS,
COMPARED WITH VARIOUS BUILDINGS

shop and forge hav-e conceived and constructed these formid-
able affairs that steamships are. We land-lubbers lack the
power of appreciation and it would be a good thing if, to
teach us to raise our hats to the works of " regeneration,”
we had to do the miles of walking that the tour of a steamship
entails.

* * *

Architects live and move within the narrow limits of
academic acquirements and in ignorance of new ways of
building, and they are quite willing that their conceptions
should remain at doves kissing one another. But our daring
and masterly constructors of steamships produce palaces in
comparison with which cathedrals are tiny things, and they
throw them on to the sea !

Architecture is stifled by custom.

The use of thick walls, which was in earlier days a necessity,
has persisted, although thin partitions of glass or brick can
well enclose a ground floor with 50 storeys above it.

EYES WHICH DO NOT SEE

In a town like Prague, for example, an old enactment
imposes a wall-thickness of 14 inches at the top storey of
houses, with an additional projection of 4 ? inches for each
storey below, which means that the thicknesses of walls of
buildings may easily be nearly 5 feet on the ground floor.
To-day, the construction of facades in which soft stone
is used in large blocks leads to this absurd result — that
the windows, originally intended to introduce light, are
flanked by deep embrasures which completely thwart the
intention.

On the valuable ground of our great cities, you can still
see masses of masonry rising as foundations for a building,
although simple concrete piles would be equally effective.

TOWARDS A NEW ARCHITECTURE

THE “ LAMORICIERE ” (CIE. TRANS ATEANTrQUE)

To architects : a beauty of a more technical order. A.n aesthetic nearer to its

real origins.

The roofs, these wretched roofs, still persist, an inexcusable
paradox. The basements are still damp and cluttered up, and
the service mains of our towns are invariably buried under
stonework like atrophied organs, although a logical approach
to the problem, easily realized, would produce the proper
solution.

The “ styles 55 — for he must indeed have something to
furnish — come in as the great contribution of the architect.
They intervene in the surface decoration of facades and of
drawing-rooms ; this is the degeneration of “ style , 55 the old
clothes of a past age ; it is a respectful and servile salute to
the past : disquieting modesty ! It is a lie ; for in the “ great

EYES WHICH DO NOT SEE

periods ” fa$ades were smooth, pierced at regular intervals and
of good human proportions. The walls were as thin as they
dare make them. Palaces ? Very good for Grand Dukes of
that time. But does any gentleman copy the Grand Dukes of
to-day ? Compiegne, Chantilly, Versailles are good to behold
from a certain angle, but . . . there is a great deal that might
be said.

* * *

A house is a machine for living in. Baths, sun, hot-water,
cold-water, warmth at will, conservation of food, hygiene,
beauty in the sense of good proportion. An armchair is a
machine for sitting in and so on.

Our modern life, when we are active and about (leaving
out the moments when we fly to gruel and aspirin) has created
its own objects : its costume, its fountain pen, its ever sharp
pencil, its typewriter, its telephone, its admirable office furni-
ture, its plate-glass and its “ Innovation ” trunks, the safety
razor and the briar pipe, the bowler hat and the limousine,
the steamship and the airplane.

Our epoch is fixing its own style day by day. It is there
under our eyes.

Eyes which do not see.

We must clear up a misunderstanding : we are in a diseased
state because we mix up art with a respectful attitude towards
mere decoration. This is to displace the natural feeling for
art and to mingle with it a reprehensible light-mindedness in

THE CUNARDER “ AQUITANIA ”

The same (esthetic as that of a briar pipe , an office desk or a limousine.

THE “AQUITANIA”

For architects : a wall all windows, a saloon full of light. What a contrast
with the windows in our houses making holes in the walls and forming a patch
of shade on either side. The result is a dismal room, and the light seems so
hard and unsympathetic that curtains are indispensable in order to soften it.

THE AQUITANIA (CUNARD LINE)

Architects note : a seaside villa , conceived as are these liners, would be more
appropriate than those we see with their heavy tiled roofs. But perhaps it
might he claimed that this is not a “ maritime ” style !

THE “AQUITANIA” (CUNARD LINE)

Architects note : the value of a “ long gallery ” or promenade — satisfying and
interesting volume ; unity in materials ; a fine grouping of the constructional
elements , sanely exhibited and rationally assembled.

I oo

TOWARDS A NEW ARCHITECTURE

THE “EMPRESS OF FRANCE” (CANADIAN PACIFIC)

An architecture pure, neat , clear, clean and healthy . Contrast with this our
carpets, cushions, canopies, wall-papers, carved and gilt furniture, faded or
“ arty ” colours : the dismalness of our Western bazaar.

everything, which merely works to the advantage of the
theories and campaigns conducted by “ decorators 55 who do
not understand their own period.

Art is an austere thing which has its sacred moments.
We profane them. A frivolous art leers upon a world which
has need rather of organisation, of implements and of methods
and which is pushing forward in travail towards the establish-
ment of a new order. A society lives primarily by bread, by
the sun and by its essential comforts. Everything remains to
be done ! Immense task ! And it is so imperative, so urgent

EYES WHICH DO NOT SEE

xoi

THE “EMPRESS OF ASIA ” (CANADIAN PACIFIC)

“ Architecture is the masterly, correct and magnificent play of masses brought

together in light,”

that the entire world is absorbed in this dominating necessity.
Machines will lead to a new order both of work and of leisure.
Entire cities have to be constructed, or reconstructed, in order
to provide a minimum of comfort, for if this is delayed too
long, there may be a disturbance of the balance of society.
Society is an unstable thing and is cracking under the con-
fusion caused by fifty years of progress which have changed
the face of the world more than the last six centuries have
done.

The time is ripe for construction, not for foolery.

102

TOWARDS A NEW ARCHITECTURE

The art of our period is performing its proper functions
when it addresses itself to the chosen few. Art is not a popular
thing, still less an expensive toy for rich people. Art is not
an essential pabulum except for the chosen few who have
need of meditation in order that they may lead. Art is in its
essence arrogant.

* * *

In the painful gestation of this age as it forms itself, a
need of harmony becomes evident.

May our eyes be opened : this harmony already exists, the
result of work governed by economy and conditioned by
physical necessities. This harmony has its causes ; it is not
in any way the effect of caprice, but is of a logical construction
and congruous with the world around it. In the daring
transposition of human labour that has taken place, nature has
still been present and with the greater rigour as the problem
was difficult. The creations of mechanical technique are
organisms tending to a pure functioning, and obey the same
evolutionary laws as those objects in nature which excite our
admiration. There is harmony in the performances which
come from the workshop or the factory. It is not Art ; it
is not the Sistine Chapel nor the Erechtheum ; these are the
everyday jobs of a whole world working with perception,
intelligence and precision, with imagination, daring and
severity.

If we forget for a moment that a steamship is a machine
for transport and look at it with a fresh eye, we shall feel that
we are facing an important manifestation of temerity, of

EYES WHICH DO NOT SEE

103

discipline, of harmony, of a beauty that is calm, vital and
strong.

A seriously- minded architect, looking at it as an architect
(i.e. a creator of organisms), will find in a steamship his freedom
from an age-long but contemptible enslavement to the
past.

He will prefer respect for the forces of nature to a lazy
respect for tradition; to the narrowness of commonplace
conceptions he will prefer the majesty of solutions which
spring from a problem that has been clearly stated — solutions
needed by this age of mighty effort which has taken so gigantic
a step forward.

The house of the earth-man is the expression of a circum-
scribed world. The steamship is the first stage in the realization
of a world organized according to the new spirit.

EYES WHICH DO NOT SEE

AIRPLANES

The airplane is the product of close selection.

The lesson of the airplane lies in the logic -which governed the
statement of the problem and its realisation.

The problem of the house has not yet been stated.

Nevertheless there do exist standards for the dwelling-house .
Machinery contains in itself the factor of economy , which makes
for selection.

The house is a machine for living in.

AIRPLANES

109

There is a new spirit : it is a spirit of construction and of synthesis guided by
a dear conception.

Whatever may be thought of it, it animates to-day the greater part of human
activity.

A GREAT EPOCH HAS BEGUN

Programme of /’ Esprit Nouveau.
No. 1. October, 1920.

^t^HERE is one profession and one only, namely archi-
-E tecture, in which progress is not considered necessary,
where laziness is enthroned, and in which the reference is
always to yesterday.

Everywhere else, taking thought for the morrow is almost
a fever and brings its inevitable solution : if a man does not
move forward he becomes bankrupt.

But in architecture no one ever becomes bankrupt. A
privileged profession, alas !

* * *

The airplane is indubitably one of the products of the most
intense selection in the range of modern industry.

The War was an insatiable ce client/ 7 never satisfied, always
demanding better. The orders were to succeed at all costs
and death followed a mistake remorselessly. We may then
affirm that the airplane mobilized invention, intelligence and
daring : imagination and cold reason. It is the same spirit that
built the Parthenon.

Let us look at things from the point of view of

TOWARDS A NEW ARCHITECTURE

architecture, but in the state of mind of the inventor of
airplanes.

The lesson of the airplane is not primarily in the forms it
has created, and above all we must learn to see in an airplane
not a bird or a dragon-fly, but a machine for flying ; the lesson
of the airplane lies in the logic which governed the enunciation
of the problem and which led to its successful realization.
When a problem is properly stated, in our epoch, it inevitably
finds its solution.

The problem of the house has not yet been stated.

One commonplace among Architects (the younger ones) :
the construction must he shown .

Another commonplace amongst them : when a thing responds
to a need, it is beautiful.

But. ... To show the construction is all very well for an
Arts and Crafts student who is anxious to prove his ability.
The Almighty has clearly shown our wrists and our ankles,
but there remains all the rest !

When a thing responds to a need, it is not beautiful ; it
satisfies all one part of our mind, the primary part, without
which there is no possibility of richer satisfactions ; let us
recover the right order of events.

Architecture has another meaning and other ends to pursue
than showing construction and responding to needs (and by
cc needs ” I mean utility, comfort and practical arrangement).

Architecture is the art above all others which achieves
a state of platonic grandeur, mathematical order, speculation.

AIRPLANES

the perception of the harmony which lies in emotional relation-
ships. This is the aim of architecture.

But let us return to our chronology.

If we feel the need of a new architecture, a clear and settled
organism, it is because, as things are, the sensation of mathe-
matical order cannot touch us since things no longer respond
to a need , and because there is no longer real construction in
architecture. An extreme confusion reigns. Architecture as
practised provides no solution to the present-day problem of
the dwelling-house and has no comprehension of the structure
of things. It does not fulfil the very first conditions and so
it is not possible that the higher factors of harmony and beauty
should enter in.

i i 2

TOWARDS A NEW ARCHITECTURE

FARMAN

The architecture of to-day does not fulfil the necessary and
sufficient conditions of the problem.

The reason is that the problem has not been stated as regards
architecture. There has been no salutary war as in the case of
the airplane.

But you will say, the Peace has set the problem in the
reconstruction of the North of France. But then, we are
totally disarmed, we do not know how to build in a modern

AIRPLANES

1 1 3

SPAD 3 3 BLERIOT. PASSENGER PLANE

{Designed by Herbemont.)

way — materials, systems of construction, THE CONCEPTION OF
the dwelling, all are lacking. Engineers have been busy
with barrages, with bridges, with Atlantic liners, with mines,
with railways. Architects have been asleep.

The airplane shows us that a problem well stated finds its
solution. To wish to fly like a bird is to state the problem
badly, and Ader’s cc Bat 55 never left the ground. To invent a
flying machine having in mind nothing alien to pure mechanics,
that is to say, to search for a means of suspension in the air and
a means of propulsion, was to put the problem properly : in
less than ten years the whole world could fly.

TOWARDS A NEW ARCHITECTURE

114

TRIPLE HYDROPLANE CAPRONI

3,000 h.p. Capable of carrying 100 passengers .

LET US STATE THE PROBLEM

Let us shut our eyes to what exists.

A house : a shelter against heat, cold, rain, thieves and the

inquisitive. A receptacle for light and sun. A certain number
of cells appropriated to cooking, work, and personal life.

A room : a surface over which one can walk at ease, a bed
on which to stretch yourself, a chair in which to rest or work,
a work-table, receptacles in which each thing can be put at
once in its right place.

The number of rooms : one for cooking and one for eating.
One for work, one to wash yourself in and one for sleep.

AIRPLANES

TRIPLANE CAPRONI
2,000 h.p, Can carry 30 passengers.

Such are the standards of the dwelling.

Then why do we have the enormous and useless roofs on
pretty suburban villas ? Why the scanty windows with their
little panes ; why large houses with so many rooms locked up ?
Why the mirrored wardrobes, the washstands, the commodes ?
And then, why the elaborate bookcases ? the consoles, the
china cabinets, the dressers, the sideboards ? Why the enor-
mous glass chandeliers ? The mantelpieces ? Why the draped
curtains ? Why the damasked wall-papers thick with colour,
with their motley design ?

Daylight hardly enters your homes. Your windows are
difficult to open. There are no ventilators for changing the

TOWARDS A NEW ARCHITECTURE

i 1 6

AIR EXPRESS

This does the journey from London to Paris in two hours.

air such as we get in any dining-car. Your chandeliers hurt
the eyes. Your imitation stone stucco and your wall-papers
are an impertinence, and no good modern picture could ever
be hung on your walls, for it would be lost in the welter of
your furnishings.

Why do you not demand from your landlord :

1. Fittings to take underclothing, suits and dresses in your
bedroom, all of one depth, of a comfortable height and as
practical as an “ Innovation ” trunk ;

2. In your dining-room fittings to take china, silver and
glass, shutting tightly and with a sufficiency of drawers in
order that cc clearing away ” can be done in an instant, and all
these fittings “ built in ” so that round your chairs and table

AIRPLANES

1 1 7

FARMAN “MOSQUITO

you have room enough to move and that feeling of space which
will give you the calm necessary to good digestion ;

3. In your living-room fittings to hold your books and protect
them from dust and to hold your collection of paintings and works of
art . And in such a way that the walls of your room are un-
encumbered. You could then bring out your pictures one
at a time when you want them.

As for your dressers, and your mirrored wardrobes, you
can sell all these to one of those young nations which have
lately appeared on the map. There Progress rages, and they
are dropping the traditional home (with its fittings, etc.) to
live in an up-to-date house ct Veurope'enne with its imitation
stone stucco and its mantelpieces.

Let us repeat some fundamental axioms :

(a) Chairs are made to sit in . There are rush-seated church
chairs at 5L, luxuriously upholstered arm-chairs at fizo and

SPAD XIII BLERIOT
(. Designed by Rechneau .)

AIR EXPRESS
Capable of 140 m.p.h.

FARMAN " GOLIATH.” BOMBING MACHINE

adjustable chairs with a movable reading-desk, a shelf for your
coffee cup, an extending foot-rest, a back that raises and lowers
with a handle, and gives you the very best position either for
work or a nap, in a healthy, comfortable and right way. Your
bergeres, your Louis XVI causeuses , bulging through their
tapestry covers, are these machines for sitting in ? Between
ourselves, you are more comfortable at your club, your bank
or in your office.

(b) Electricity gives light. We can have concealed lighting,
or we can have diffused and projected lighting. One can see
as clearly as in broad daylight without ever hurting one’s eyes.

A hundred-candle-power lamp weighs less than two ounces,
but there are chandeliers weighing nearly two hundredweight
with elaborations in bronze or wood, and so huge that they
fill up all the middle of the room ; the upkeep of these horrors

120

TOWARDS A NEW ARCHITECTURE

is a terrible task because of the flies. These chandeliers are also
very bad for the eyes at night.

(c) Windows serve to admit light , 44 a little, much, or not at all”
and to see outside. There are windows in sleeping-cars which
close hermetically or can be opened at will ; there are
the great windows of modern cafes which close hermetically
or can be entirely opened by means of a handle which causes
them to disappear below ground ; there are the windows in
dining cars which have little louvres opening to admit air 44 a
little, much, or not at all,” there is modern plate glass which
has replaced bottle-glass and small panes ; there are roll
shutters which can be lowered gradually and will keep out the
light at will according to the spacing of their slats. But
architects still use only windows like those at Versailles or
Compiegne, Louis X, Y or Z which shut badly, have tiny
panes, are difficult to open and have their shutters outside ; if
it rains in the evening one gets wet through in trying to close
them.

(d) Pictures are made to be looked at and meditated on. In
order to see a picture to advantage, it must be hung suitably
and in the proper atmosphere. The true collector of pictures
arranges them in a cabinet and hangs on the wall the particular
painting he wants to look at ; but your walls are a riot of all
manner of things.

(e) A house is made for living in . — 44 No ! ” — 44 But of
course ! — 44 Then you are a Utopian ! ”

Truth to tell, the modern man is bored to tears in his
home ; so he goes to his club. The modern woman is bored

AIRPLANES

I 21

AIR EXPRESS. A FARMAN GOLIATH

outside her boudoir ; she goes to tea-parties. The modem
man and woman are bored at home ; they go to night-clubs.
But lesser folk who have no clubs gather together in the

122

TOWARDS A NEW ARCHITECTURE

evening under the chandelier and hardly dare to walk through
the labyrinth of their furniture which takes up the whole room
and is all their fortune and their pride.

The existing plan of the dwelling-house takes no account of
man and is conceived as a furniture store. This scheme of
things, favourable enough to the trade of Tottenham Court
Road, is of ill omen for society. It kills the spirit of the family,
of the home ; there are no homes, no families and no children,
for living is much too difficult a business.

The temperance societies and the anti-Malthusians should
address an urgent appeal to architects ; they should have the
manual OF THE DWELLING printed and distributed to mothers
of families and should demand the resignation of all the pro-
fessors in the architectural schools.

THE MANUAL OF THE DWELLING

Demand a bathroom looking south , one of the largest rooms in the
house or fiat, the old drawing-room for instance. One wall to be
entirely glared, opening if possible on to a balcony for sun baths ; the
most up-to-date fittings with a shower-bath and gymnastic appliances.

An adjoining room to be a dressing-room in which you can dress
and undress. Never undress in your bedroom. It is not a clean
thing to do and makes the room horribly untidy. In this room demand
fitments for your linen and clothing, not more than j feet in height,
with drawers, hangers, etc.

Demand one really large living room instead of a number of small

ones.

AIRPLANES

123

Demand bare walls in your bedroom , your living room and your
dining-room. Built-in fittings to take the place of much of the
furniture , which is expensive to buy , takes up too much room and
needs looking after.

If you can, put the kitchen at the top of the house to avoid
smells.

Demand concealed or diffused lighting.

Demand a vacuum cleaner.

Buy only practical furniture and never buy decorative “pieces.”
If you want to see bad taste, go into the houses of the rich. But only
a few pictures on your walls and none but good ones.

Keep your odds and ends in drawers or cabinets.

The gramophone or the pianola or wireless will give you exact
interpretations of first-rate music, and you will avoid catching cold in
the concert hall, and the frenzy of the virtuoso .

Demand ventilating panes to the windows in every room.

Teach your children that a house is only habitable when it is full of
light and air, and when the floors and walls are clear. To keep your
floors in order eliminate heavy furniture and thick , carpets.

Demand a separate garage to your dwelling.

Demand that the maid's room should not be an attic. Do not
park y our servants under the roof.

Take a flat which is one sz\e smaller than what your parents
accustomed you to. Bear in mind economy in your actions, your
household management and in your thoughts.

Conclusion. Every modern man has the mechanical sense.
The feeling for mechanics exists and is justified by our daily

Paris to Prague in six hours. Paris to Warsaw in nine hours.

AIRPLANES

125

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EYES WHICH DO NOT SEE .

FARMAN

AIRPLANES

127

activities. This feeling in regard to machinery is one of respect,
gratitude and esteem.

Machinery includes economy as an essential factor leading
to minute selection. There is a moral sentiment in the feeling
for mechanics.

The man who is intelligent, cold and calm has grown wings
to himself.

Men— intelligent, cold and calm — are needed to build the
house and to lay out the town.

DELAGE. FRONT-WHEEL BRAKE

This precision , this cleanness in execution go further hack than our re-born
mechanical sense. Phidias felt in this way : the entablature of the Parthenon
is a witness. So did the Egyptians when they polished the Pyramids. This
at a time when Euclid and Pythagoras dictated to their contemporaries.

EYES WHICH DO NOT SEE

III

AUTOMOBILES

We must aim at the fixing of standards in order to face the
problem of perfection .

The Parthenon is a product of selection applied to a standard .
Architecture operates in accordance with standards.

Standards are a matter of logic , analysis and minute study : they
are based on a problem which has been well “stated.”

A standard is definitely established by experiment.

AUTOMOBILES

J 33

DELAGE, 1921

If the problem of the dwelling or the flat were studied in the same way that a
chassis is, a speedy transformation and improvement would be seen in our
houses. If houses were constructed by industrial mass-production , like chassis ,

unexpected but sane and defensible forms would soon appear, and a new asthetic
would be formulated with astonishing precision.

There is a new spirit : it is a spirit of construction and of synthesis guided by
clear conception.

Programme of l’ Esprit Nouveau.
No. 1. October 1920.

TT is necessary to press on towards the establishment of
standards in order to face the problem of perfection.

The Parthenon is a product of selection applied to an
established standard. Already for a century the Greek temple
had been standardized in all its parts.

PAESTUM, 600-550 B.C.

When once a standard is established, competition comes at
once and violently into play. It is a fight ; in order to win
you must do better than your rival in every minute point , in

i 3 6

TOWARDS A NEW ARCHITECTURE

HISPANO SUIZA, I9II. OZENFANT COACHWORK

A standard is established on sure bases, not capriciously but
with the surety of something intentional and of a logic con-
trolled by analysis and experiment.

All men have the same organism, the same functions.

All men have the same needs.

The social contract which has evolved through the ages
fixes standardized classes, functions and needs producing
standardized products.

The house is a thing essential to man.

Painting is a thing essential to man since it responds to
needs of a spiritual order, determined by the standards of
emotion.

All great works of art are based on one or other of the
great standards of the heart : CEdipus, Phcedra, the Enfant
Prodigue , the Madonnas, Paul et Virginie , Philemon and Baucis,

AUTOMOBILES

137

BIGNAN-SPORT 192T

the Pauvre Pvcheur , the Marseillaise , Madelon vient nous verser ci
bo ire. . . .

The establishment of a standard involves exhausting every
practical and reasonable possibility, and extracting from them
a recognized type conformable to its functions, with a maxi-
mum output and a minimum use of means, workmanship and
material, words, forms, colours, sounds.

The motor-car is an object with a simple function (to travel)
and complicated aims (comfort, resistance, appearance), which
has forced on big industry the absolute necessity of standard-
ization. All motor-cars have the same essential arrangements.
But, by reason of the unceasing competition between the
innumerable firms who make them, every maker has found
himself obliged to get to the top of this competition and, over
and above the standard of practical realization, to prosecute the

i 3 8 TOWARDS A NEW ARCHITECTURE

search for a perfection and a harmony beyond the mere prac-
tical side, a manifestation not only of perfection and harmony,
but of beauty.

Here we have the birth of style, that is to say the attainment,
universally recognized, of a state of perfection universally felt.

The establishment of a standard is developed by organizing
rational elements, following a line of direction equally rational.
The form and appearance are in no way preconceived, they
are a result ; they may have a strange look at first sight. Ader
made a cc Bat,” but it did not fly ; Wright and Farman set
themselves the problem of sustaining solid bodies in air, the
result was jarring and disconcerting, but it flew. The standard
had been fixed. Practical results followed.

The first motor-cars were constructed, and their bodies
built, on old lines. This was contrary to the necessities of the
displacement and rapid penetration of a solid body. The study
of the laws of penetration fixed the standard, a standard which
has evolved in accordance with two different aims : speed, the
greater mass in front (sporting bodies) ; comfort, the main bulk
at the back (saloon). In either case there is no longer anything
in common with the ancient carriage with its slow displacement.

Civilizations advance. They pass through the age of the
peasant, the soldier and the priest and attain what is rightly
called culture. Culture is the flowering of the effort to select.
Selection means rejection, pruning, cleansing ; the clear and
naked emergence of the Essential.

From the primitiveness of the Early Christian chapel, we
pass to Notre Dame of Paris, the Invalides, the Place de la

AUTOMOBILES

1 39

THE PARTHENON

Little by little the Greek temple was formulated, passing from construction
to Architecture. One hundred years later the Parthenon marked the climax
of the ascending curve.

Concorde . Feeling has been clarified and refined, mere decora-
tion set aside and proportion and scale attained, an advance has
been made ; we have passed from the elementary satisfactions
(decoration) to the higher satisfactions (mathematics).

If Breton cupboards still remain in Brittany, it is because
the Bretons have continued there, very remote and very stable,
fully occupied in their fishing and cattle breeding. It is not
seemly that a gentleman of good standing should sleep on a
Breton bed in his Paris mansion ; it is not seemly that a gentle-
man who owns a saloon car should sleep in a Breton bed, and

TOWARDS A NEW ARCHITECTURE

1 40

THE PARTHENON

Each part is decisive and marks the highest point in precision and execution :
proportion is clearly written therein.

so on. We have only to get a clear idea of this and to draw
the logical conclusion. To own together a large car and a
Breton bed is quite usual, I am sorry to say.

Everybody asserts with conviction and enthusiasm : ce The
motor-car marks the style of our epoch ! 55 but the Breton bed
is sold and manufactured every day by the antique dealers.

Let us display, then, the Parthenon and the motor-car so
that it may be clear that it is a question of two products of
selection in different fields, one of which has reached its climax
and the other is evolving. That ennobles the automobile.
And what then ? Well, then it remains to use the motor-car

AUTOMOBILES

TRIPLE HYDROPLANE CAPRONI

Showing how plastic organisms are created in response to a well-stated problem.

as a challenge to our houses and our great buildings. It is here
that we come to a dead stop. cc Rien ne va plus.” Here we
have no Parthenons.

The standard of the house is a question of a practical and
constructive order. I have attempted to set it forth in the
preceding chapter on airplanes.

The standard of furniture is in its full flood of experiment
among the makers of office furniture and trunks, clock-makers
and so on. We have only to follow this path : a task for the
engineer. And all the humbug talked about the unique
object, the precious cc piece,” rings false and shows a pitiful

142

TOWARDS A NEW ARCHITECTURE

CAPRONI-EXPLORATION

Poetry lies not only in the spoken or written word . The poetry of facts is
stronger still. Objects which signify something and which are arranged with
talent and with tact create a poetic fact.

lack of understanding of the needs of the present day : a chair
is in no way a work of art ; a chair has no soul ; it is a machine
for sitting in.

Art, in a highly cultivated country, finds its means of
expression in pure art, a concentrated thing free from all
utilitarian motives — painting, literature, music.

Every human manifestation involves a certain quantum of
interest and particularly so in the aesthetic domain ; this

AUTOMOBILES

i43

interest may be of an order dealing with the senses or of an
intellectual order. Decoration is of a sensorial and elementary
order, as is colour, and is suited to simple races, peasants and
savages. Harmony and proportion incite the intellectual
faculties and arrest the man of culture. The peasant loves
ornament and decorates his walls. The civilized man wears
a well-cut suit and is the owner of easel pictures and
books.

Decoration is the essential overplus, the quantum of the
peasant ; and proportion is the essential overplus, the quantum
of the cultivated man.

In architecture, the quantum of interest is achieved by the
grouping and proportion of rooms and furniture ; a task for
the architect. And beauty ? This is an imponderable which
cannot function except in the actual presence of its primordial
bases : the reasonable satisfaction of the mind (utility,

economy) ; after that, cubes, spheres, cylinders, cones, etc.
(sensorial). Then . . . the imponderable, the relationships
which create the imponderable : this is genius, inventive genius,
plastic genius, mathematical genius, this capacity for achieving
order and unity by measurement and for organizing, in accord-
ance with evident laws, all those things which excite and satisfy
our visual senses to the fullest degree.

Then there arise those multifarious sensations, which evoke
all that a highly cultivated man may have seen, felt and loved ;
which release, by means he cannot escape, vibrations he has
already experienced in the drama of life : nature, men, the
world.

144

TOWARDS A NEW ARCHITECTURE

BELLANGER. SALOON

In this period of science, of strife and drama in which the
individual is violently tossed about at every moment, the
Parthenon appears to us as a living work, full of grand har-
monies. The sum of its inevitable elements gives the measure
of the degree of perfection to which man can attain when he
is absorbed in a problem definitely stated. The perfection in
this case is so much outside the normal, that our apprehension
of the Parthenon can only correspond nowadays with a very
limited range of sensation, and, unexpectedly enough, with
sensations of a mechanical kind ; its correspondence is rather
with those huge impressive machines with which we are familiar
and which may be considered the most perfect results of our

AUTOMOBILES

i45

VOISIN. SPORTS TORPEDO, I92I

It is a simpler matter to form a judgment on the clothes of a well-dressed man
than on those of a well-dressed woman, since masculine costume is standardised .
It is certain that Phidias was at the side of Ictinos and Kallicrates in building
the Parthenon , and that he dominated them, since all the temples of the time
were of the same type, and the Parthenon surpasses them all bejond measure.

present-day activities, the only products of our civilization
which have really ££ got there.”

Phidias would have loved to have lived in this standardized
age. He would have admitted the possibility, nay the certainty
of success. His vision would have seen in our epoch the con-
clusive results of his labours. Before long he would have
repeated the experience of the Parthenon.

Architecture is governed by standards. Standards are a
matter of logic, analysis and precise study. Standards are based

TOWARDS A NEW ARCHITECTURE

Rcsistanc

Section at right angles
to direction.

iphere.

-» Hemisphere — concave

Hemisphere — convex
(open behind).

Ovoid body : the greater
mass in front.

The cone which gives the best penetration is the result of experiment and
calculation, and this is confirmed by natural creations such as fishes , birds, etc.
Experimental application : the dirigible, racing car.

AUTOMOBILES

THE PARTHENON

Phidias in building the Parthenon did not work as a constructor, engineer or
designer. All these elements already existed. What he did was to perfect the
work and endue it with a noble spirituality .

i 4 8 towards a new architecture

on a problem which has been well stated. Architecture means
plastic invention, intellectual speculation, higher mathematics.
Architecture is a very noble art.

Standardization is imposed by the law of selection and is
an economic and social necessity. Harmony is a state of
agreement with the norms of our universe. Beauty governs
all ; she is of purely human creation ; she is the overplus
necessary only to men of the highest type.

But we must first of all aim at the setting up of standards
in order to face the problem of perfection.

Hadrian’s villa near tivoli, a.d. 130

ARCHITECTURE

THE LESSON OF ROME

The business of Architecture is to establish emotional relationships
by means of raw materials.

Architecture goes beyond utilitarian needs.

Architecture is a plastic thing.

The spirit of order , a unity of intention.

The sense of relationships ; architecture deals with quantities .
Passion can create drama out of inert stone.

THE LESSON OF ROME

1 5 3

You employ stone, wood and concrete, and with these materials you build houses
and palaces. That is construction. Ingenuity is at work.

But suddenly you touch my heart, you do me good, I am happy and I say : “ This
is beautiful.” That is Architecture. Art enters in.

My house is practical. I thank you, as I might thank Railway engineers, or the
Telephone service. You have not touched my heart.

But suppose that walls rise towards heaven in such a way that I am moved. I
perceive your intentions. Your mood has been gentle, brutal, charming or noble.
The stones you have erected tell me so. You fix me to the place and my eyes regard
it. They behold something which expresses a thought. A thought which reveals
itself without word or sound, but solely by means of shapes which stand in a certain
relationship to one another. These shapes are such that they are clearly revealed in
light. The relationships between them have not necessarily any reference to what is
practical or descriptive. They are a mathematical creation of your mind. They are
the language of Architecture. By the use of raw materials and startingfrom conditions
more or less utilitarian, you have established certain relationships which have
aroused my emotions. This is Architecture.

R OME is a picturesque spot. The sunlight there is so lovely
that it excuses everything. Rome is a bazaar where every-
thing is sold. All the utensils of the life of a race have remained
there — the child's toy, the soldier's weapons, the ecclesiastical old
clothes, the bidets of the Borgias and the adventurer’s plumes.
In Rome the uglinesses are legion.

If one remembers the Greeks one feels that the Roman had
bad taste, the pukka Roman, Julius II and Victor-Emmanuel.

Ancient Rome was packed within walls always too narrow ;
a city is not beautiful which is huddled together. Renaissance
Rome had its pompous outbursts, spread about in all the corners
of the city. The Rome of Victor-Emmanuel garners its legacy,
tickets and preserves it, and installs its modern life in the
corridors of this museum, and proclaims itself “ Roman " by

154

TOWARDS A NEW ARCHITECTURE

THE PYRAMID OF CESTIUS, 12 B.C.

the Memorial to Victor-Emmanuel I in the centre of the city
between the Capitol and the Forum ... a work of forty
years, something bigger than anything else, and in white
marble !

Without doubt everything is too huddled together in Rome.

ANCIENT ROME

Rome’s business was to conquer the world and govern it.
Strategy, recruiting, legislation : the spirit of order. In order
to manage a large business house, it is essential to adopt some
fundamental, simple and unexceptionable principles. The

THE LESSON OF ROME

156

TOWARDS A NEW ARCHITECTURE

INTERIOR OF THE PANTHEON, A.D. 120

Roman order was simple and direct. If it was brutal, so much
the worse — or so much the better.

They had enormous desires for domination and organ-
ization. Old Rome as regards architecture had nothing to
show, the city walls were too crowded, the houses were piled
up ten storeys high — the sky-scraper of the ancients. The
Forum must have been ugly, a little like the bric-a-brac of the
sacred city of Delphi. Town planning, a large lay-out !
There was none of this.

Pompeii must be seen, appealing in its rectangular plan.
They had conquered Greece and, like good barbarians, they
found the Corinthian order more beautiful than the Doric,

THE LESSON OF ROME

i57

THE PANTHEON, A . D . 120

because it was more ornate. On then with the acanthus
capitals, and entablatures decorated with little discretion or
taste ! But underneath this there was something Roman, as
we shall see. Briefly, they constructed superb chassis, but they
designed deplorable coachwork rather like the landaus of
Louis XIV. Outside Rome, where there was space, they built
Hadrian’s Villa. One can meditate there on the greatness of
Rome. There, they really planned. It is the first example of
Western planning on the grand scale. If we cite Greece on
this score we may say that “ the Greek was a sculptor and

i 5 B

TOWARDS A NEW ARCHITECTURE

nothing more/’ But wait a little, architecture is not only a
question of arrangement. Arrangement is one of the funda-
mental prerogatives of architecture. To walk in Hadrian’s
Villa and to have to admit that the modern power of organ-
ization (which after all is “ Roman ”) has done nothing so far
— what a torment this is to a man who feels that he is a party
to this ingenuous failure !

They did not have before them the problem of devastated
regions, but that of equipping conquered regions ; it is all one
and the same. So they invented methods of construction and
with these they did impressive things— £C Roman.” The word
has a meaning. Unity of operation, a clear aim in view, classi-
fication of the various parts. Immense cupolas, with their
supporting drums, imposing vaulting, all held together with
Roman cement ; these still remain an object of admiration.
They were great constructors.

A clear aim, the classification of parts, these are a proof of
a special turn of mind : strategy, legislation. Architecture is
susceptible to these aims, and repays them with interest. The
light plays on pure forms, and repays them with interest.
Simple masses develop immense surfaces which display them-
selves with a characteristic variety according as it is a question
of cupolas, vaulting, cylinders, rectangular prisms or pyramids.
The adornment of the surfaces is of the same geometrical order.
The Pantheon, the Colosseum, the Aqueducts, the Pyramid of
Cestius, the Triumphal Arches, the Basilica of Constantine, the
Baths of Caracalla.

Absence of verbosity, good arrangement, a single idea,

THE LESSON OF ROME

daring and unity in construction, the use of elementary shapes.
A sane morality.

Let us retain, from these Romans, their bricks and their
Roman cement and their Travertine and we will sell the Roman
marble to the millionaires. The Romans knew nothing of the
use of marble.

TOWARDS A NEW ARCHITECTURE

i 60

INTERIOR OF S. MARIA IN COSMEDIN

BYZANTINE ROME

Renewed impact of Greece, by way of Byzantium. This
time it is not the astonishment of a primitive type before the
rich entanglement of an acanthus : Greeks by origin come to
Rome to build S. Maria in Cosmedin. A Greece very far
from Phidias but one which has kept the root of the matter,
that is to say the sense of relationships and the mathematical
precision thanks to which perfection becomes approachable.

This quite tiny church of S. Maria, a church for poor people,
set in the midst of noisy and luxurious Rome, proclaims the
noble pomp of mathematics, the unassailable power of pro-
portion, the sovereign eloquence of relationship. The design
is merely that of the ordinary basilica, that is to say the form of
architecture in which barns and hangars are built. The walls
are of rough lime plaster. There is only one colour, white ;
always powerful since it is positive. This tiny church commands

THE PULPIT IN S. MARIA IN COSMEDIN

your respect. <e Oh ! ” you exclaim, coming from St. Peter’s
or the Palatine or the Colosseum. The sensualists in art, the
animalists in art would be annoyed by S. Maria in Cosmedin.
To think that this church was in existence in Rome when the
great Renaissance was in full swing with its gilded palaces and
its horrors !

Greece by way of Byzantium, a pure creation of the spirit.
Architecture is nothing but ordered arrangement, noble prisms,

THE LESSON OF ROME

163

seen in light. There exists one thing which, can ravish us, and
this is measure or scale. To achieve scale ! To map out in
rhythmical quantities, animated by an even impulse, to bring
life into the whole by means of a unifying and subtle relation-
ship, to balance, to resolve the equation. For, if this expression
may be a paradox in talking of painting, it fits well with
architecture ; with architecture which does not concern
itself with representation or with any element that relates
to the human countenance, with architecture which works
by quantities .

These quantities provide a mass of material as a basis for
work ; brought into measure, introduced into the equation,
they result in rhythms, they speak to us of numbers, of relation-
ships, of mind.

In the balanced silence of S. Maria in Cosmedin there stand
out the sloping handrail of a pulpit and the inclined stone
book-rest of an ambo in a conjunction as silent as a gesture
of assent. These two quiet oblique lines which are fused in
the perfect movement of a spiritual mechanics — this is the pure
and simple beauty that architecture can give.

TOWARDS A NEW ARCHITECTURE

THE APSES OF ST. PETER’S AT ROME

III

MICHAEL ANGELO

Intelligence and passion ; there is no art without emotion,
no emotion without passion. Stones are dead things sleeping
in the quarries but the apses of St. Peter’s are a drama. Drama
lies all round the key achievements of humanity. The drama
of Architecture is the same as that of the man who lives by
and through the universe. The Parthenon is moving; the
Egyptian Pyramids, of granite once polished and shining like

steel, were moving. To give forth emanations, storm, gentle
breezes on plain and sea, to raise mighty Alps with the pebbles
that go to form the walls of men’s houses, this is to succeed
in a symphony of relationships.

As the man, so the drama, so the architecture. We must not
assert with too much conviction that the masses give rise to
their man. A man is an exceptional phenomenon occurring at
long intervals, perhaps by chance, perhaps in accordance with
the pulsation of a cosmography not yet understood.

THE APSES OF ST. PETER’S

THE LESSON OF ROME

THE ATTIC STOREY OF ST. PETER'S

THE LESSON OF ROME

167

TOWARDS A NEW ARCHITECTURE

i 68

plan of st. peter’s as it extsts

The Nave has been extended as shown by the shading ; Michael Angelo had
something to say ; it has all been destroyed .

Michael Angelo is the man of the last thousand years as
Phidias was the man of the thousand years before. The
Renaissance did not produce Michael Angelo, it only produced a
crowd of talented fellows.

The work of Michael Angelo is a creation , not a Renaissance,
and overshadows the classical epochs. The apses of St. Peter’s
are Corinthian. Imagine it ! Look at them and think of the
Madeleine. He had seen the Colosseum and retained its rare
proportions ; the Thermal of Caracalla and the Basilica of Con-

THE LESSON OF ROME

169

PORTA PI A BY MICHAEL ANGELO

stantine showed him the limits which he could expediently
exceed in his high aims. And so we have the rotundas, the
set-backs, the intersecting walls, the drum of the dome, the
hypostyle porch, a gigantic geometry of harmonious relation-
ships. Then we have renewed rhythms in the stylobates,
pilasters, and entablatures of entirely new sections. Then the
windows and niches which begin the rhythm yet once again.
The total mass provides an arresting novelty in the dictionary
of architecture ; it is salutary to stop and reflect for a moment
on this thunderbolt, after the Quintocento.

Finally, St. Peter’s should have had an interior which
would have been the monumental climax of a S. Maria in

ST. PETER S.

)

SCHEME BY MICHAEL ANGELO (1547-1564)

The dimensions are considerable . To construct such a dome in stone was a
tour de force that few men would have dared. St. Peter’s covers an area of
about 1 8,ooo square yards as against Notre Dame } about 7,000 square yards,
and Sta. Sophia at Constantinople about 8,000. The dome is 404 feet in
height ; the width across the transepts is 1 5 o yards. The general arrangement

of the apses and of the Attic storey is allied to that of the Colosseum ; the heights
are the same. The whole scheme was a complete unity ; it grouped together
elements of the noblest and richest kind : the Portico, the cylinders, the square
shapes, the drum, the dome. The mouldings are of an intensely passionate
character, harsh and pathetic. The whole design would have risen as a single
mass, unique and entire . The eye would have taken it in as one thing.
Michael Angelo completed the apses and the drum of the dome . The rest fell
into barbarian hands ; all was spoilt. Mankind lost one of the highest works
of human intelligence. If one can imagine Michael Angelo as cognisant of the
disaster, we have a terrifying drama.

THE PIAZZA OF ST. PETER’S AS IT IS

Verbose and awkward. Bernini’s Colonnade is beautiful in itself. The
facade is beautiful in itself, but bears no relation to the Dome. The real aim
of the building was the Dome ; it has been hidden ! The Dome was in a
proper relation to the apses : they have been hidden. The Portico ivas a solid
mass : it has become merely a front

A WINDOW IN THE APSES OF ST. PETER’S
I7T

IJZ

TOWARDS A NEW ARCHITECTURE

Cosmedin ; the Medici Chapel at Florence shows on what a
scale this work, of which the pattern had been so well estab-
lished, would have been realized. But foolish and thoughtless
Popes dismissed Michael Angelo ; miserable men have murdered
St. Peter’s within and without. It has become stupidly enough
the St. Peter’s of to-day, like a very rich and pushing cardinal,
lacking . . . everything. Immense loss ! A passion, an in-
telligence beyond normal— this was the Everlasting Yea; it
has become sadly enough a “ perhaps,” an ce apparently,” an
“ it may be,” an e< I am not sure.” Wretched failure !

Since this chapter is entitled Architecture , it may be thought
excusable to speak therein of the passion of a man.

ROME AND OURSELVES

Rome is a bazaar in full swing, and a picturesque one.
There you find every sort of horror (see the four reproductions
here given) and the bad taste of the Roman Renaissance. We
have to judge this Renaissance by our modem taste, which
separates us from it by four great centuries of effort, the 17th,
1 8th, 19th, and 20th.

We reap the benefit of this endeavour ; we judge hardly,
but with a warrantable severity. These four centuries are
lacking at Rome, which fell asleep after Michael Angelo. Setting
foot once again in Paris, we recover our ability to judge.

THE LESSON OF ROME

*73

The lesson of Rome is for wise men, for those who know
and can appreciate, who can resist and can verify. Rome is the
damnation of the half-educated. To send architectural students
to Rome is to cripple them for life. The Grand Prix de Rome
and the Villa Medici are the cancer of French architecture.

The Pala%%p di
\ The Palazzo

Modern Rome. '
Guisti^ia.
Renaissance Rome
Barberini .

Renaissance Rome,
Saint Angelo.
Renaissance Rome
Colonna

The Castel

The Galleria

The Plan proceeds from within to without ; the exterior is the
result of an interior. The elements of architecture are light and shade ,
walls and space .

Arrangement is the gradation of aims , the classification of
intentions.

Man looks at the creation of architecture with his eyes , which are
/ feet 6 inches from the ground. One can only consider aims which the
eye can appreciate and intentions which take into account architectural
elements. If there come into play intentions which do not speak, the
language of architecture , you arrive at the illusion of plans , you
transgress the rules of the Plan through an error in conception , or
through a leaning towards empty show.

THE ILLUSION OF PLANS

179

You employ stone, wood and concrete, and with these materials you build houses
and palaces. That is construction. Ingenuity is at work.

But suddenly you touch my heart, you do me good, I am happy and I say : “ This
is beautiful.” That is Architecture. Art enters in.

My house is practical. I thank you, as I might thank Railway engineers, or the
Telephone service. You have not touched my heart.

But suppose that walls rise towards heaven in such a way that I am moved. I
perceive your intentions. Your mood has been gentle, brutal, charming or noble.
The stones you have erected tell me so. You fix me to the place and my eyes regard
it. They behold something which expresses a thought. A thought which reveals
itself without word or sound, but solely by means of shapes which stand in a certain
relationship to one another. These shapes are such that they are clearly revealed in
light. The relationships between them have not necessarily any reference to what is
practical or descriptive. They are a mathematical creation of your mind. They
are the language of Architecture. By the use of inert materials and starting from
conditions more or less utilitarian, you have established certain relationships which
have aroused my emotions. This is Architecture.

^ po make a plan is to determine and fix ideas.
^ It is to have had ideas.

It is so to order these ideas that they become intelligible,
capable of execution and communicable. It is essential there-
fore to exhibit a precise intention, and to have had ideas in
order to be able to furnish oneself with an intention. A plan
is to some extent a summary like an analytical contents table.
In a form so condensed that it seems as clear as crystal and like
a geometrical figure, it contains an enormous quantity of ideas
and the impulse of an intention.

In a great public institution, the Ecole des Beaux Arts, the
principles of good planning have been studied, and then as
time has gone by, dogmas have been established, and recipes
and tricks. A method of teaching useful enough at the begin-
ning has become a dangerous practice. To represent the inner

1 80 TOWARDS A NEW ARCHITECTURE

meaning certain hallowed external signs and aspects have been
fixed. The plan, which is really a cluster of ideas and of the
intention essential to this cluster of ideas, has become a piece of
paper on which black marks for walls and lines for axes play
at a sort of mosaic on a decorative panel making graphic
representations of star-patterns, creating an optical illusion.
The most beautiful star becomes the Grand Prix de Rome.
Now, the plan is the generator, C£ the plan is the determination
of everything ; it is an austere abstraction, an algebrization, and
cold of aspect.” It is a plan of battle. The battle follows and
that is the great moment. The battle is composed of the impact
of masses in space and the morale of the army is the cluster of
predetermined ideas and the driving purpose. Without a good
plan nothing exists, all is frail and cannot endure, all is poor
even under the clutter of the richest decoration.

From the very start the plan implies the methods of con-
struction to be used ; the architect is above all an engineer.
But let us keep strictly to architecture, this thing which
endures through the ages. Placing myself entirely at this one
angle of vision I commence by drawing attention to this vital
fact : a plan proceeds from within to without , for a house or a
palace is an organism comparable to a living being. I shall
speak of the architectural elements of the interior. I shall pass
on to arrangement . In considering the effect of buildings in
relation to a site, I shall show that here too the exterior is
always an interior. By means of various fundamental elements
which will be clearly shown in diagrams, I can demonstrate
the illusion of plans, this illusion which kills architecture.

THE ILLUSION OF PLANS

181

ensnares the mind and creates architectural trickery ; this is the
fruit of violating undeniable truths, the result of false con-
ceptions or the fruit of vanity.

A PLAN PROCEEDS FROM WITHIN TO WITHOUT

A building is like a soap bubble. This bubble is perfect
and harmonious if the breath has been evenly distributed and
regulated from the inside. The exterior is the result of an
interior.

In Broussa in Asia Minor, at the Green Mosque, you enter
by a little doorway of normal human height ; a quite small
vestibule produces in you the necessary change of scale so that
you may appreciate, as against the dimensions of the street and
the spot you come from, the dimensions with which it is
intended to impress you. Then you can feel the noble size of
the Mosque and your eyes can take its measure. You are in a

THE SULEIMAN MOSQUE, STAMBOUL

182

TOWARDS A NEW ARCHITECTURE

PLAN OF THE GREEN MOSQUE, BROUSSA

great white marble space filled with light. Beyond you can see
a second similar space of the same dimensions, but in half-light
and raised on several steps (repetition in a minor key) ; on
each side a still smaller space in subdued light ; turning round,
you have two very small spaces in shade. From full light to
shade, a rhythm. Tiny doors and enormous bays. You are

SANTA SOPHIA, CONSTANTINOPLE

THE ILLUSION OF PLANS

183

captured, you have lost the sense of the common scale. You
are enthralled by a sensorial rhythm (light and volume) and
by an able use of scale and measure, into a world of its own
which tells you what it set out to tell you. What emotion,
what faith ! There you have motive and intention. The
cluster of ideas, this is the means that has been used. In con-

THE CASA DEL NOCE. THE ATRIUM, POMPEII

sequence, at Broussa as at Santa Sophia, as at the Suleiman
Mosque of Stamboul, the exterior results from the interior.

Casa del Noce, at Pompeii. Again the little vestibule
which frees your mind from tjie street. And then you are in
the Atrium ; four columns in the middle (four cylinders) shoot
up towards the shade of the roof, giving a feeling of force and
a witness of potent methods ; but at the far end is the brilliance
of the garden seen through the peristyle which spreads out this
light with a large gesture, distributes it and accentuates it,
stretching widely from left to right, making a great space.

i8 4 TOWARDS A NEW ARCHITECTURE

Between the two is the Tablium, contracting this vision like the
lens of a camera. On the right and on the left two patches of
shade— little ones. Out of the clatter of the swarming street
which is for every man and full of picturesque incident, you
have entered the house of a Roman. Magistral grandeur,
order, a splendid amplitude : you are in the house of a Roman.
What was the function of these rooms ? That is outside the
question. After twenty centuries, without any historical refer-
ence, you are conscious of Architecture, and we are speaking
of what is in reality a very small house.

THE CASA DEL NOCE

THE ILLUSION OF PLANS 185

ARCHITECTURAL ELEMENTS OF THE INTERIOR

Our elements are vertical walls, the spread of the soil, holes
to serve as passages for man or for light, doors or windows.
The holes give much or little light, make gay or sad. The walls
are in full brilliant light, or in half shade or in full shade, giving
an effect of gaiety, serenity or sadness. Your symphony is
made ready. The aim of architecture is to make you gay or
serene. Have respect for walls. The Pompeian did not cut up
his wall-spaces ; he was devoted to wall-spaces and loved light.
Light is intense when it falls between walls which reflect it.

Hadrian’s villa, rome

1 86 TOWARDS A NEW ARCHITECTURE

The ancients built walls, walls which stretch out and meet to
amplify the wall. In this way they created volumes, which are
the basis of architectural and sensorial feeling. The light bursts
on you, by a definite intention, at one end and illuminates the

walls. The impression of light is extended outside by cylinders
(I hardly like to say columns, it is a worn-out word), peristyles
or pillars. The floor stretches everywhere it can, uniformly and
without irregularity. Sometimes, to help the effect, the floor is

POMPEII

raised by a step. There are no other architectural elements
internally : light, and its reflection in a great flood by the walls
and the floor, which is really a horizontal wall. To erect well-
lit walls is to establish the architectural elements of the interior.
There remains to achieve Proportion.

THE ILLUSION OF PLANS

187

ARRANGEMENT

An axis is perhaps the first human manifestation ; it is the
means of every human act. The toddling child moves along
an axis, the man striving in the tempest of life traces for himself
an axis. The axis is the regulator of architecture. To establish
order is to begin to work. Architecture is based on axes. The
axes of the Schools are an architectural calamity. The axis is a
line of direction leading to an end. In architecture, you must
have a destination for your axis. In the Schools they have
forgotten this and their axes cross one another in star-shapes,
all leading to infinity, to the undefined, to the unknown, to
nowhere, without end or aim. The axis of the Schools is a
recipe and a dodge.

Arrangement is the grading of axes, and so it is the grading
of aims, the classification of intentions.

The architect therefore assigns destinations to his axes.
These ends are the wall (the plenum, sensorial sensation) or
light and space (again sensorial sensation).

In actual fact a birds’-eye view such as is given by a plan on
a drawing-board is not how axes are seen ; they are seen from
the ground, the beholder standing up and looking in front of
him. The eye can reach a considerable distance and, like a
clear lens, sees everything even beyond what was intended or
wished. The axis of the Acropolis runs from the Piraeus to
Pentelicus, from the sea to the mountain. The Propylea are at
right angles to the axis, in the distance on the horizon — the sea.

THE ILLUSION OF PLANS

189

In the horizontal, at right angles to the direction that the archi-
tectural arrangement has impressed on you from where you
stand, it is the rectangular impression which tells. This is archi-
tecture of a high order : the Acropolis extends its effect right
to the horizon. The Propylea in the other direction, the colossal
statue of Athena on the axis, and Pentelicus in the distance.
That is what tells. And because they are outside this forceful
axis, the Parthenon to the right and the Erechtheum to the left,
you are enabled to get a three-quarter view of them , in their full
aspects. Architectural buildings should not all be placed upon
axes, for this would be like so many people all talking at once.

The Forum of Pompeii : Arrangement is the grading of
aims, the classification of intentions. The plan of the Forum
contains a number of axes, but it would never obtain even a
bronze medal at the Beaux Arts ; it would be refused, it doesn’t
make a star ! It is a joy to the mind to consider such a plan
and to walk in the Forum.

And here IN THE HOUSE of THE TRAGIC POET we have the
subtleties of a consummate art. Everything is on an axis, but
it would be difficult to apply a true line anywhere. The axis is
in the intention, and the display afforded by the axis extends to
the humbler things which it treats most skilfully (the corridors,
the main passage, etc.) by optical illusions. The axis here is
not an arid thing of theory ; it links together the main volumes
which are clearly stated and differentiated one from another.
When you visit the House of the Tragic Poet, it is clear that
everything is ordered. But the feeling it gives is a rich one.
Y ou then note clever distortions of the axis which give inten-

TOWARDS A NEW ARCHITECTURE

1 90

sity to the volumes : the central motive of the pavement is set
behind the middle of the room ; the well at the entrance is at
the side of the basin. The fountain at the far end is in the
angle of the garden. An object placed in the centre of a room
often spoils the room, for it hinders you from standing in the

HOUSE OF THE TRAGIC POET, POMPEII

middle of the room and getting the axial view ; a monument
placed in the middle of a square often spoils the square and the
buildings which surround it— often but not always ; in this
matter each case must be judged on its merits.

Arrangement is the grading of axes, and so it is the grading
of aims, the classification of intentions.

THE ILLUSION OF PLANS

191

THE EXTERIOR IS ALWAYS AN INTERIOR

When, at the Schools, they draw axes in the shape of a star,
they imagine that the spectator arriving in front of a building is
aware of it alone, and that his eye must infallibly follow and
remain exclusively fixed on the centre of gravity determined by
these axes. The human eye, in its investigations, is always on
the move and the beholder himself is always turning right and
left, and shifting about. He is interested in everything and is
attracted towards the centre of gravity of the whole site. At
once the problem spreads to the surroundings. The houses
near by, the distant or neighbouring mountains, the horizon
low or high, make formidable masses which exercise the force
of their cubic volume. This cubic volume, as it appears and as
it really is, is instantly gauged and anticipated by the intelli-
gence. This sensation of cubic volume is immediate and funda-
mental ; your building may cube 100,000 cubic yards, but
what lies around it may cube millions of cubic yards, and that
is what tells. Then there comes in the sensation of density :
a tree or a hill is less powerful and of a feebler density
than a geometrical disposition of forms. Marble is denser,
both to the eye and to the mind, than is wood, and so forth.
Always you have gradation.

To sum up, in architectural ensembles, the elements of the
site itself come into play by virtue of their cubic volume, their
density and the quality of the material of which they are com-
posed, bringing sensations which are very definite and very

1C>Z

TOWARDS A NEW ARCHITECTURE

THE PROPYLEA AND THE TEMPLE OF THE WINGLESS VICTORY

varied (wood, marble, a tree, grass, blue horizons, near or dis-
tant sea, sky). The elements of the site rise up like walls
panoplied in the power of their cubic co-efficient, strati-
fication, material, etc., like the walls of a room. Walls in

THE PROPYLEA

THE ILLUSION OF PLANS

*93

relation to light, light and shade, sadness, gaiety or serenity,
etc. Our compositions must be formed of these elements.

On the Acropolis at Athens the temples are turned
towards one another, making an enclosure, as it were, which
the eye readily embraces ; and the sea which composes with the
architraves, etc. This is to compose with the infinite resources

of an art full of dangerous riches out of which beauty can only
come when they are brought into order.

At Hadrian’s Villa the levels are established in accordance
with the Campagna ; the mountains support the composition,
which indeed is based upon them.

In the Forum of Pompeii, with its vistas of each building in
relation to the whole and to every detail, there is a grouping
of varied interest constantly renewed.

THE ILLUSION OF PLANS

195

TRANSGRESSION

In the examples I shall now give, the architect has not taken
into account that a plan proceeds from within to without, and
has not formed his composition out of volumes quickened by a
single well-ordered impulse, in conformity with an aim which
was the driving intention of the work ; an aim that everyone

st. peter’s, rome

The line drawn across the third hay of the Nave shows the place where Michael
Angelo intended his facade to com {see Michael Angelo's original scheme in the
preceding chapter).

1 96 TOWARDS A NEW ARCHITECTURE

could afterwards see for himself with his own eyes. The
architect has not taken into account the architectural elements
of the interior, that is to say surfaces which are linked together
in order to receive light and make manifest the content of the
building. He has not thought in terms of space, but has made
stars on paper and drawn axes to form these stars. He has
dealt with intentions which do not belong to the language of
architecture. He has transgressed the rules of proper planning
by an error of conception or an inclination towards vanities.

St. Peter’s at Rome : Michael Angelo constructed the enor-
mous dome surpassing everything that had been seen till then ;
immediately on entering you were under the immense cupola.
But the Popes have added three bays in front and a great vesti-
bule. The whole idea is destroyed. Nowadays it is necessary
to traverse a tunnel more than 300 feet long before arriving at
the dome ; two equivalent masses are in conflict ; the effect
of the architecture is lost (and with its decoration, conceitedly
coarse, the fundamental fault is enormously increased and St.
Peter’s remains an enigma for the architect). Santa Sophia at
Constantinople is a triumph with its superficial area of about
7,500 square yards, whereas St. Peter’s covers an area of more
than 16,000.

Versailles : Louis XIV is no longer merely the successor
of Louis XIII. He is the Roi-Soleil. Immense vanity ! At
the foot of the throne, his architects brought to him plans
drawn from a bird’s-eye view which seem like a chart of stars ;
immense axes, formed like stars. The Roi-Soleil swells with
pride ; and gigantic works are carried out. But a man has

THE ILLUSION OF PLANS

*97

VERSAILLES

(From a contemporary drawing)

only two eyes at a level of about 5 feet 6 inches above the
ground, and can only look at one point at a time. The arms
of the stars are only visible one after the other, and what you
have is really a right angle masked by foliation. A right angle
is not a star ; the stars fall to pieces. And so it goes on : the
great basin, the embroidered flower-beds which are outside the
general panorama, the buildings that one can only see in frag-
ments and as one moves about. It is a snare and a delusion.
Louis XIV deceived himself of his own free will. He trans-
gressed the truths of architecture because he did not work with
the objective elements of architecture.

And a little grand-ducal princeling, a courtier, like so many
others, of the glory of the Roi-Soleil, planned the town of

198 TOWARDS A NEW ARCHITECTURE

Carlsruhe which is the most lamentable failure of an inten-
tion, the perfect ce knock-out/ 5 1 The star exists only on paper,
a poor consolation. Illusion 1 The illusion of fine plans.
From any point in the town you can never see more than three
windows of the castle and they always seem the same ones ;
the humblest everyday house would produce as much effect.
From the castle, you can never look down more than a single
street at a time, and any street in any small market town would
have a similar effect. Vanity of vanities ! It must not be
forgotten, in drawing out a plan, that it is the human eye that
judges the result. 2

When we pass from mere construction to architecture it is
because we are indulging a high aim. Vanity must be avoided.
Vanity is the cause of architectural vanities.

1 I apologize for the retention here of the original French. — F. E.

2 See the Plan of Carlsruhe at the head of this Section.

'Profile and contour are the touchstone of the Architect.

Here he reveals himself as artist or mere engineer.

Profile and contour are free of all constraint.

There is here no longer any question of custom , nor of tradition ,
nor of construction , nor of adaptation to utilitarian needs.

Profile and contotir are a pure creation of the mind ; they call for
the plastic artist.

ARCHITECTURE, PURE CREATION OF THE MIND 203

You employ stone, wood and concrete, and with these materials you build houses
and palaces ; that is construction. Ingenuity is at work.

But suddenly you touch my heart, you do me good, I am happy and I say : “ This
is beautiful.” That is Architecture. Art enters in.

My house is practical. I thank you, as I might thank Railway engineers or the
Telephone service. You have not touched my heart.

But suppose that walls rise towards heaven in such a way that I am moved. I
perceive your intentions. Your mood has been gentle, brutal, charming or noble.
The stones you have erected tell me so. You fix me to the place and my eyes regard
it. They behold something which expresses a thought. A thought which reveals
itself without word or sound, but solely by means of shapes which stand in a certain
relationship to one another. These shapes are such that they are clearly revealed in
light. The relationships between them have not necessarily any reference to what
is practical or descriptive. They are a mathematical creation of your mind. They
are the language of Architecture. By the use of inert materials and starting from
conditions more or less utilitarian, you have established certain relationships which
have aroused my emotions. This is Architecture.

T HE distinction of a fine face lies in the quality of the features
and in a quite special and personal value of the relationship
between them. The same general type of face is the property
of every individual : nose, mouth, forehead, etc., and also the
same general proportion between these elements. There are
millions of countenances constructed on these essential lines ;
nevertheless all are different : there is a variation in the quality
of the features and in the relationship which unites them.
We say that a face is handsome when the precision of the
modelling and the disposition of the features reveal proportions
which we feel to be harmonious because they arouse, deep
within us and beyond our senses, a resonance, a sort of sounding-
board which begins to vibrate. An indefinable trace of the
Absolute which lies in the depths of our being.

THE PARTHENON

The Greeks on the Acropolis set up temples which are animated by a single
thought , drawing around them the desolate landscape and gathering it into the
composition. Thus, on every point of the horizon, the thought is single. It
is on this account that there are no other architectural works on this scale of
grandeur . We shall he able to talk <( Doric ” when man, in nobility of aim
and complete sacrifice of all that is accidental in Art, has reached the higher
levels of the mind : austerity.

INTERNAL PORTICO OF THE PROPYLEA

The Plastic scheme is expressed in unity.

204

ARCHITECTURE, PURE CREATION OF THE MIND 205

THE PROPYLEA

From what is emotion horn ? From a certain relationship between definite elements : cylinders , an even floor, even
walls. From a certain harmony with the things that make tip the site. From a plastic system that spreads its effects
over every part of the composition. From a unity of idea that reaches from the unity of the materials used to the unity
of the general contour.

THE PROPYLEA

Emotion is born of unity of aim ; of that unperturbed resolution that wrought its marble with the firm intention of
achieving all that is most pure, most clarified, most economical . Every sacrifice, every cleansing had already been per-
formed. The moment was reached when nothing more might be taken away, when nothing would be left but these
closely-knit and violent elements , sounding dear and tragic like brazen trumpets .

ARCHITECTURE, PURE CREATION OF THE MIND 207

There was a breath of tenderness and Ionic was born ; but the Parthenon dictated their forms to the Caryatides.

TOWARDS A NEW ARCHITECTURE

208

THE PARTHENON

Certain writers have declared that the Doric column was inspired by a tree
springing from the earth , without base, etc., a proof that every noble form of
art derives from nature. It is most false, since the tree with straight trunk is

unknown in Greece, where only stunted pines and twisted olives grow. The
Greeks created a plastic system directly and forcibly affecting our
senses : columns and their flutings, a complex entablature rich in meaning ;
steps which set off and link on to the horizon. They employed the most
delicate distortions, applying to their contours an impeccable adjustment to
the laws of optics.

This sounding-board which vibrates in us is our criterion
of harmony. This is indeed the axis on which man is organized
in perfect accord with nature and probably with the universe,
this axis of organization which must indeed be that on which
all phenomena and all objects of nature are based ; this axis
leads us to assume a unity of conduct in the universe and to

ARCHITECTURE, PURE CREATION OF THE MIND 209

THE PARTHENON

We must realise clearly that Doric architecture did not grow in the fields with
the asphodels , and that it is a pure creation of the mind. The plastic system of
Doric work is so pure that it gives almost the feeling of a natural growth.
But, none the less, it is entirely man’s creation , and affords us the complete
sensation of a profound harmony. The forms used are so separate from
natural aspect (and how superior they are to those of Egyptian or Gothic
architecture'), they are so deeply thought out in regard to light and materials,
that they seem, as it were, linked to earth and sky, as if by nature. This creates

a fact as reasonable to our understanding as the fact “ sea ” or the fact “ moun-
tain.” How many works of man have attained this height ?

admit a single will behind it. The laws of physics are thus a
corollary to this axis, and if we recognize (and love) science
and its works, it is because both one and the other force us to
admit that they are prescribed by this primal will. If the results
of mathematical calculation appear satisfying and harmonious
to us, it is because they proceed from the axis. If, through

2 10

TOWARDS A NEW ARCHITECTURE

THE PARTHENON

The plastic system

THE PARTHENON

Here is something to arouse emotion. We are in the inexorable realm of the
mechanical. There are no symbols attached to these forms : they provoke definite
sensations ; there is no need of a key in order to understand them. Brutality,
intensity , the utmost sweetness, delicacy and great strength. And who discovered

the combination of these elements ? An inventor of genius. These stones
lay inert in the quarries of Tentelicus, unshaped. To group them thus needed
not an engineer, but a great sculptor .

2 12

TOWARDS A NEW ARCHITECTURE

calculation, the airplane takes on the aspect of a fish or some
object of nature, it is because it has recovered the axis. If the
canoe, the musical instrument, the turbine, all results of experi-
ment and calculation, appear to us to be C£ organized ” phe-
nomena, that is to say as having in themselves a certain life, it
is because they are based upon that axis. From this we get a
possible definition of harmony, that is to say a moment of
accord with the axis which lies in man, and so with the laws of
the universe,— a return to universal law. This would afford an
explanation of the cause of the satisfaction we experience at the
sight of certain objects, a satisfaction which commands at every
moment an effective unanimity.

If we are brought up short by the Parthenon, it is because a
chord inside us is struck when we see it ; the axis is touched.
We do not stop short in front of the Madeleine, which is
made up, just like the Parthenon, of steps, columns and pedi-
ments (the same primary elements). And the reason is that
behind and beyond the grosser sensations, the Madeleine
cannot touch our axis ; we do not feel the profounder har-
monies, and are not rooted to the spot by the recognition of
these.

The objects in nature and the results of calculation are
clearly and cleanly formed ; they are organized without
ambiguity. It is because we see clearly that we can read, learn
and feel their harmony. I repeat : clear statement is essential
in a work of art.

If the works of nature live , and if the creations of calculation

THE PROPYLEA

'Everything is stated exactly, the mouldings are tight and firm, relationships
are established between the annulets of the capital, the abacus and the bands of
the architrave.

move and produce activity in us, it is because they are both
animated by a unity of the intention which is responsible for
them. I repeat : there must be a unity of aim in the work of art.

If the objects of nature and if the creations of calculation gain
our attention and awaken our interest, it is because both one
and the other have a fundamental attitude which characterizes
them. I repeat : a work of art must have its own special
character.

214

TOWARDS A NEW ARCHITECTURE

THE PARTHENON

The fraction of the inch comes into play. The curve of the echinus is as rational

as that of a large shell. The annulets are 5 o feet from the ground, but they tell
more than all the baskets of acanthus on a Corinthian capital. The Doric
state of mind and the Corinthian state of mind are two things. A moral fact
creates a gulf between them.

Clear statement, the giving of a living unity to the work,
the giving it a fundamental attitude and a character : all this
is a pure creation of the mind.

This is everywhere allowed in the case of painting and
music ; but architecture is lowered to the level of its
utilitarian purposes : boudoirs, W.C.’s, radiators, ferro-con-
crete, vaults or pointed arches, etc., etc. This is construction.

ARCHITECTURE, PURE CREATION OF THE MIND

215

1 1 if

this is not architecture. Architecture only exists when there
is a poetic emotion. Architecture is a plastic thing. I mean by
ce plastic ” what is seen and measured by the eyes. Obviously,
if the roof were to fall in, if the central heating did not work,
if the walls cracked, the joys of architecture would be greatly
diminished ; the same thing might be said of a gentleman who
listened to a symphony sitting on a pin-cushion or in a bad
draught.

TOWARDS A NEW ARCHITECTURE

216

Almost every period of architecture has been linked on to
research into construction. The conclusion has often been

THE PARTHENON

The fraction of the inch comes into play. The mouldings contain a number
of elements , but everything is ordered with a view to strength. Astonishing
distortions : the bands are incurved or bend over outwards in order to display
themselves better to the eye. Incised lines, in half shade, form an edge to
shadows which would otherwise be vague.

drawn that architecture is construction. It may be that the
effort put forth by architects has been mainly concentrated on
the constructional problems of the time ; that is not a reason

ARCHITECTURE, PURE CREATION OF THE MIND 217

for mixing different things. It is quite true that the architect
should have construction as least as much at his fingers 5 ends
as a thinker his grammar. And construction being a much

THE PARTHENON

A.II this plastic machinery is realised in marble with the rigour that we have
learned to apply in the machine. The impression is of naked polished steel.

more difficult and complex science than grammar, an architect's
efforts are concentrated on it for a large part of his career ;
but he should not vegetate there.

The plan of the house, its cubic mass and its surfaces have
been dictated partly by the utilitarian demands of the problem.

2 I 8

TOWARDS A NEW ARCHITECTURE

and partly by imagination, i.e., plastic creation. Here at once,
in regard to the plan and consequently in regard to whatever
is erected in space, the architect has worked plastically ; he
has restrained utilitarian demands in deference to the plastic
aim he was pursuing ; he has made a composition.

Then comes the moment when he must carve the lineaments
of the outward aspect. He has brought the play of light and
shade to the support of what he wanted to say. Profile and
contour have entered in, and they are free of all constraint ;
they are a pure invention which makes the outward aspect
radiant or dulls it. It is in his contours that we can trace the
plastic artist ; the engineer is effaced and the sculptor comes to
life. Contours are the touchstone of the architect ; in dealing
with them he is forced to decide whether he will be a plastic
artist or not. Architecture is the skilful, accurate and mag-
nificent play of masses seen in light ; and contours are also
and exclusively the skilful, accurate and magnificent play of
volumes seen in light. Contours go beyond the scope of the
practical man, the daring man, the ingenious man ; they call
for the plastic artist.

Greece, and in Greece the Parthenon, have marked the
apogee of this pure creation of the mind : the development of
profile and contour.

We can see that it is no longer a question of customary use
nor of tradition, nor of constructional methods, nor of adapta-
tion to utilitarian needs. It is a question of pure invention, so
personal that it may be called that of one man ; Phidias made
the Parthenon, for Ictinus and Callicrates, the official architects

ARCHITECTURE, PURE CREATION OF THE MIND 219

of the Parthenon, built other Doric temples which seem to us
cold and not over-interesting. Passion, generosity and mag-
nanimity are so many virtues written into the geometry of

THE PARTHENON

Austere profiles . Doric morality .

the handling of the contour,— volumes disposed in precise
relationships. Phidias, Phidias the great sculptor, made the
Parthenon.

There has been nothing like it anywhere or at any period.

220

TOWARDS A NEW ARCHITECTURE

It happened at a moment when things were at their keenest,
when a man, stirred by the noblest thoughts, crystallized them
in a plastic work of light and shade. The mouldings of the
Parthenon are infallible and implacable. In severity they go
far beyond our practice, or man’s normal capabilities. Here,

THE PARTHENON
The audacity of square mouldings .

the purest witness to the physiology of sensation, and to the
mathematical speculation attached to it, is fixed and deter-
mined : we are riveted by our senses ; we are ravished in our
minds ; we touch the axis of harmony. No question of
religious dogma enters in ; no symbolical description, no
naturalistic representation ; there is nothing but pure forms in
precise relationships.

ARCHITECTURE, PURE CREATION OF THE MIND 221

For two thousand years, those who have seen the Parthenon
have felt that here was a decisive moment in Architecture.

We are at a decisive moment. At the present time when the
arts are feeling their way and when painting, for instance, is

THE PARTHENON

The audacity of the square mouldings ; austerity and nobility.

finding little by little the formulas of a healthy mode of expres-
sion and so jars violently on the spectator, the Parthenon gives
us sure truths and emotion of a superior, mathematical order.
Art is poetry : the emotion of the senses, the joy of the mind
as it measures and appreciates, the recognition of an axial
principle which touches the depth of our being. Art is this

ARCHITECTURE, PURE CREATION OF THE MIND 223

pure creation of the spirit which shows us, at certain heights,
the summit of the creation to which man is capable of attaining.
And man is conscious of great happiness when he feels that
he is creating.

THE PARTHENON

The tympanum of the pediment is bare. The section of the cornice is as tight
as an engineer's outline .

MASS-PRODUCTION

HOUSES

A great epoch has begun .

There exists a new spirit.

Industry, overwhelming us like a flood which rolls on towards its
destined end, has furnished us with new tools adapted to this new epoch ,
animated by the new spirit.

Economic law unavoidably governs our acts and our thoughts.

The problem of the house is a problem of the epoch. The equili-
brium of society to-day depends upon it. Architecture has for its first
duty , in this period of renewal, that of bringing about a revision of
values, a revision of the constituent elements of the house.

Mass-production is based on analysis and experiment.

Industry on the grand scale must occupy itself with building and
establish the elements of the house on a mass-production basis.

We must create the mass -production spirit.

The spirit of constructing mass-production houses.

The spirit of living in mass-production houses.

The spirit of conceiving mass-production houses.

If we eliminate from our hearts and minds all dead concepts in
regard to the houses and look, at the question from a critical and
objective point of view, we shall arrive at the “ House-Machine the
mass -production house, healthy ( and morally so too) and beautiful
in the same way that the working tools and instruments which
accompany our existence are beautiful.

Beautiful also with all the animation that the artist's sensibility can
add to severe and pure functioning elements.

MASS-PRODUCTION HOUSES

229

^T^HE programme demanded in France by MM. Loucheur and
Bonnevay was for a law authorizing the construction of
500,000 dwellings to be built well and cheaply. This was an
exceptional event in the annals of construction and required
exceptional means and methods.

Now, it was necessary to start from the very beginning ;
nothing being ready for the realization of such an immense
programme. The right state of mind does not exist.

The state of mind for mass-production houses, the state of
mind for living in mass-production houses, the state of mind
for conceiving mass-production houses.

Everything must be begun from the beginning, nothing is
ready. Specialization has hardly touched the domain of the
dwelling-house. There are neither the workshops nor the
technical specialists.

But at any moment, if once the mass-production spirit came
to life, everything would quickly be begun. In fact, in every
branch of building. Industry, as formidable as a natural force
and overrunning everything like a flood that rolls on to its
destined end, tends more and more to transform natural raw
materials and to produce what we call “ new materials. 55 They
are legion : cements and limes, steel girders, sanitary fittings,
insulating materials, piping, ironmongery, water-proofing com-
positions, etc., etc. All this stuff is dumped in bulk into
buildings in course of construction, and is worked into the job
on the spot ; this involves enormous costs in labour and leads

LE CORBUSIER, I 9 I 5 . A GROUP OF MASS-PRO-

The walls and partitions were a light filling of bricks , breeze slabs and so on, cap-
agree with that of the doors, cupboards and windows, which were all worked to one
was fixed before the walls, and so dictated the alignment both of these and of the
and the houses were thus completed bj a single body of workmen : masons. Jill

SSI

LE CORBUSIER, I 9 2 '

The concrete was poured in from above as you would fill a bottle. A house can b
shocks our contemporary architects, who cannot believe in a house that is made h
dormers and mansards .

CONCRETE HOUSES

completed in three days. It comes out from the shuttering like a casting. But this
three days ; we must take a year to build it, and we must have pointed roofs,

231

z 3 2 TOWARDS A NEW ARCHITECTURE

to half-and-half solutions. The reason is that the various
objects have not been standardised. As the necessary state of
mind does not exist, attention has never been given to the
serious study of the various units, and still less to that of the
construction itself ; the mass-production state of mind is
hateful to architects and to the ordinary man (by infection and
persuasion).

The prime consequences of the industrial evolution in
“ building ” show themselves in this first stage ; the replacing
of natural materials by artificial ones, of heterogeneous and
doubtful materials by homogeneous and artificial ones (tried
and proved in the laboratory) and by products of fixed com-
position. Natural materials, which are infinitely variable in
composition, must be replaced by fixed ones.

On the other hand the laws of Economics demand their
rights : steel girders and, more recently, reinforced concrete,
are pure manifestations of calculation, using the material of
which they are composed in its entirety and absolutely exactly ;
whereas in the old-world timber beam there may be lurking
some treacherous knot, and the very way in which it is squared
up means a heavy loss in material.

Lastly, in certain fields, the technical experts have already
spoken. Water supply and lighting services are rapidly being
evolved ; central heating has begun to take into consideration
the structure of walls and windows— surfaces which tend to
cooling, for instance — and in consequence stone, the good old
material stone, used for walls 3 feet thick or more, is seen to be
more than outmatched by light cavity walls in breeze slabs.

MASS-PRODUCTION HOUSES 233

and so on. Accepted things so far treated as almost unassailable
no longer hold their own : roofs which need no longer be
pointed for purposes of throwing off water, the enormous and
handsome window-embrasures which annoy us since they
imprison the light and deprive us of it ; the massive timbers, as
thick as you please and heavy for all eternity, but which will
still spring and split if placed near a radiator, whilst a patent
board i inch thick will remain intact. . . .

It was a common thing in the good old days (which still go
on, alas !) to see heavy horses drawing enormous stones to the
yard, and a mass of human labour unloading them, cutting and
dressing them, hoisting them on to the scaffolding, placing
them in position and, rule in hand, making lengthy adjustments
to every face ; such buildings might take two years to con-
struct : to-day a building can be erected in a few months ; the
P.O. have recently finished their immense Cold Storage
building at Tolbiac. The materials used are confined to grains
of sand and coke-breeze the size of small nuts ; the walls are
thin like membranes ; but enormous consignments are stored in
this building. Thin walls to give protection against differences
of temperature, and partitions 3 to 4 inches thick in spite of
the enormous loads stored there. Things have indeed altered !

The difficulties of transport are at their height : it is clear
that houses represent an immense tonnage. If this were reduced
four-fifths, that would indeed be up-to-date ! The war has
shaken us all up. Contractors have bought new plant, in-
genious, patient and rapid. Will the yard soon be a factory ?
There is talk of houses made in a mould by pouring in liquid

LE CORBUSIER, I915. HOUSE

The constructional method is here applied to a middle-class house, at the same
of the method employed permit of a large and rhythmical arrangement and make
principle shows its true value : some sort of link between the rich man's house

concrete from above, completed in one day as you would fill
a bottle.

One thing leads to another, and as so many cannons, air-
planes, lorries and wagons had been made in factories, someone
asked the question : “Why not make houses ? ” There you
have a state of mind really belonging to our epoch. Nothing is

234

IN REINFORCED CONCRETE

rate per foot cube as a simple workman's house. The architectural resources
a real architectural treatment possible. It is here that the mass-production
and the poor man's ; and some sort of decency in the rich man's dwelling.

ready, but everything can be done. In the next twenty years,
big industry will have co-ordinated its standardized materials,
comparable with those of metallurgy ; technical achievement
will have carried heating and lighting and methods of rational
construction far beyond anything we are acquainted with.
Contractors’ yards will no longer be sporadic dumps in which

235

236

TOWARDS A NEW ARCHITECTURE

PLAN OF HOUSING SCHEME IN REINFORCED CONCRETE

everything breathes confusion ; financial and social organ-
ization, using concerted and forceful methods, will be able to
solve the housing question, and the yards will be on a huge scale,
run and exploited like government offices. Dwellings, urban
and suburban, will be enormous and square-built and no longer
a dismal congeries ; they will incorporate the principle of
mass-production and of large-scale industrialization. It is even

HOUSE IN REINFORCED CONCRETE. HOUSE AND WORKSHOP

The walls do not carry any weight ; the windows go right round the house .

MASS-PRODUCTION HOUSES

* 37

LE CORBUSIER, I9I5. INTERIOR OF A REINFORCED CONCRETE HOUSE

Mass-production doors, windows, cupboards : the windows are built up of
one , two, a do^en units : one door with one impost, two doors with two imposts ,
or two doors without impost, etc. ; cupboards glassed above and with drawers
below for books, utensils, etc. All these units, which big industry can supply,
are based on a common unit of measurement : they can be adapted to one
another exactly. The framework of the house being made, these elements are
set up in their proper places in the empty shell and temporarily fixed by laths ;
the voids are filled by plaster slabs, bricks or lathing ; the normal method of
building is reversed and months of work are saved. A further gain, of the
greatest importance, is architectural unity, and by means of the module, or
unit of measurement, good proportion is assured automatically.

possible that building “ to measure ” will cease. An inevitable
social evolution will have transformed the relationship between
tenant and landlord, will have modified the current conception
of the dwelling-house, and our towns will be ordered instead of
being chaotic. A house will no longer be this solidly-built
thing which sets out to defy time and decay, and which is an
expensive luxury by which wealth can be shown ; it will be a
tool as the motor-car is becoming a tool. The house will no

LE CORBUSIER, I919.

The ground consisted of layers of gravel. A quarry was opened on the site ;
floors were in reinforced concrete. An c esthetic of its own results from the
advantage demands the exclusive employment of straight lines, square-set ;
We must clear our minds of romantic cobwebs.

238

HOUSES OF COARSE CONCRETE

and the gravel was run with lime into a raft iz inches in thickness ; the
method employed, and to use the resources of the modern industrial “yard” to
this is the grand acquisition of modern architecture, and it is a great gain.

239

LE CORBUSIER, 1921. MASS-PRODUCTION HOUSE

“ Citroban ” {not to say Citroen). That is to say, a house like a motor-ear,
conceived and carried out like an omnibus or a ship's cabin. The actual needs
of the dwelling can be formulated and demand their solution. We must figjot
against the old-world house, which made a bad use of space. We must look
upon the house as a machine for living in or as a tool. When a man starts
any particular industry he buys the necessary equipment of tools ; when he sets
up house he rents, in actual fact, a ridiculous dwelling. Till now a house has
consisted of an incoherent grouping of a number of large rooms ; in these
rooms the space has been both cramped and wasted. To-day, happily, we
are not rich enough to carry on these customs, and as it is difficult to get people
to look at the problem under its true aspect {machines for living in), it is nearly
impossible to build in our towns, with disastrous results. Windows and doors
must have their sieves readjusted ; railway carriages and saloon-cars have
shown that man can pass through smaller openings, and that these can be worked
out to the last square inch ; it is criminal to make W. C.'s 36 feet square. As
the price of building has quadrupled itself, we must reduce the old architectural

LE CORBUSIER, I922. MASS-PRODUCTION VILLA

Framework of concrete. A large living-room 30 feet X 16 feet; kitchen,
maids' room ; bedroom, bathroom, boudoir ; two bedrooms and a “ solarium.”

240

pretensions and the cubage of houses by at least one-half ; henceforth the pro-
blem is in the hands of the technical expert : we must enlist the discoveries
made in industry and change our attitude altogether .

As to beauty , this is always present when you have proportion ; and pro-
portion costs the landlord nothing, it is at the charge of the architect ! The
emotions will not be aroused unless reason is first satisfied, and this comes
when calculation is employed . There is no shame in living in a house without

a pointed roof, with walls as smooth as sheet iron, with windows like those
of factories. And one can be proud of having a house as serviceable as a type-

writer.

LE CORBUSIER., I92I. A “CITROHAn” HOUSE

Framework of concrete, girders made on the site and raised by a hand-winch.
Hollow walls of 1 concrete and expanded metal with a 7 cavity ; all floor
slabs on the same unit of measurement ; the factory-window frames , with
adaptable ventilating, on the same unit. The arrangements in conformity
with the running of a household ; abundant lighting, all hygienic needs met and
servants well cared for.

241

LE CORBUSIER, I 9 I 9 .

The ordinary house weighs too much and involves the cost of transportation of a
factory-made house is needed . The constructional principle is that of casings

filled in with rough material, aggregate, rough rubble, etc., found on the site,
walls an important insulating quality ; ceilings and floors of arched corrugated
or so thick . The corrugated sheets remain permanently and form a definitely

time as the casings. The house is completed by one class of labour, and the only

LE CORBUSIER.

When one talks of mass-production houses one means, of course, the “ housing-
housing scheme affords the variety necessary for architectural composition and
mapped-out scheme, constructed on a mass-production basis, can give a feeling
America has given us an example by the elimination of hedges and fences,
property which took its rise over there ; such suburbs give a great sense of

quantity of material — bricks , woodwork, cement, tiles, timber, etc . The

of asbestos sheeting about thick, forming courses about 3 feet in height,
lightly bound with litne mortar, leaving between them ca'vities which give the
asbestos sheets which form a shuttering and receive a coating of concrete an inch
insulating layer. The woodwork, windows and doors are adjusted at the same
transport needed is that of a double shell of asbestos sheeting.

scheme Unity in the constructional elements is a guarantee of beauty. A
lends itself to design on a large scale and to real architectural rhythms. A. well-
of calm, order and neatness, and inevitably imposes discipline on the inhabitants,
rendered possible only by the modern feeling of respect for other people’s
space ; for once hedges and fences are removed, light and sunshine reign over all.

243

244

TOWARDS A NEW ARCHITECTURE

LE CORBUSIER, 192I. A SEASIDE VILLA CONSTRUCTED WITH
MASS-PRODUCTION UNITS

Reinforced concrete piers every 1 6 feet in each direction ; slightly vaulted
ceilings of reinforced sjabs. Within this framework , which is exactly like
that of industrial buildings, the plan is arranged as required by means of
slender partitions. The net cost is extremely low.

On the (esthetic side there is a gain of the utmost importance in the use of
standard units of dimension. The lower cost of such a building, as compared
with that of a more complicated form of construction, enables a greater ground
area to be covered with a larger building. The lightly constructed walls and
partitions can be rearranged at any time and the plan altered at will.

PLAN OF THE VILLA, SHOWING THE PIERS REGULARLY DISPOSED

MASS-PRODUCTION HOUSES

INTERIOR OF THE SEASIDE VILLA

The concrete piers of uniform section, the flat vaults of the ceilings, the standard-
ised window-units, the solids and the voids make up the architectural elements
of the construction.

LE CORBUSIER. INTERIOR OF A MONOL HOUSE, ARRANGED AS A

MIDDLE-CLASS HOME

If cultivated people realised that mass-construction houses can be built of perfect
design and proportion, and at less cost than their flat in town, they would at
once insist on a better suburban train service, so that a real use might be made
of the city's surrounding country-side.

Plan of one
storey.

Jit street level
a great entrance
ball ; on other
floors the grand
staircase and the
main corridor.

Ground floor plan :
The shading indi-
cates the hanging
gardens

LE CORBUSIER, I922. A GREAT RENT-PURCHASE SCHEME

The drawings show the arrangement of a group of ioo maisonettes disposed in
five storeys, each maisonette having two floors and its own garden. A communal
service provides for all necessities and provides the solution to the servant
question ( which is only just beginning and is an inevitable social fact). Modern
achievement, applied to so important an enterprise, replaces human labour by
the machine and by good organisation ; constant hot water, central-heating,

oe OtAunce I

“FREEHOLD MAISONETTES”

Mass-production construction of concrete piers and slabs. Cavity walls.

247

“freehold maisonettes”

One of the hanging gardens.

refrigerators , vacuum cleaners, pure water, etc. Servants are no longer of
necessity tied to the house ; they come here, as they would to a factory, and do
their eight hours ; in this way an active staff is available day and night. The
provision of food, whether cooked or not, is arranged by a special purchasing
service, which makes for quality and economy. From a vast kitchen the food

“FREEHOLD MAISONETTES ”

View of a dining-room {the hanging garden is seen through the window on the right).

248

“freehold maisonettes”

General view of one block

is supplied as required to be eaten, either privately or in the communal restaurant .
Each maisonette has its own gymnasium and sports room, but on the roof there
is a communal hall for sports and a 300 yards track. On the roof too is an
entertainment hall for the use of the inhabitants. The ordinary narrow entrance

lobby of the house is replaced by a vast hall, and a porter is on duty day and
night to receive visitors and show them to the lifts. There is the great covered
court, on the roof of the underground garages , for tennis. Trees and flowers
all around this court, and all along the street in the gardens ; in each hanging
garden flowers and creepers. “ Standardisation ” here comes into its own.
The maisonettes represent a type of house-arrangement which is rational and
sensible, without emphasis in any particular direction, but sufficient and prac-
tical. By the system of rent purchase the bad old property systems no longer
exist.

No actual rent is paid ; the tenants take shares in the enterprise ; these are
payable over a period of twenty years, and the interest represents a very low
rent.

Mass-production is even more essential than anywhere else in great enterprises
of this kind : low cost. A.nd the mass-production spirit brings with it
many unhoped-for benefits at a difficult time : domestic economy.

freehold maisonettes”: entrance hall
249

LE CORBUSIER AND

If we analyse the 400 square yards allotted to each inhabitant of a garden city,
3 00 square yards are given up to lawns, fruit and vegetable gardens, flower-
result is often a few bunches of carrots and a basket of pears. There is no
and sports generally at any time on any day right at one’s door, not in “ sports
Let us put the problem more logically : house 5 o square yards with small pleasure
or at the sixth storey arranged in “ honeycomb ” fashion). Ground the blocks
of i)o square yards per house. In front of the houses a similar area of ground

yield ( irrigation , f armed-out labour, small trucks for moving manure, soil,
The agricultural labourer is deserting the country-side ; with three shifts of
eight hours each in operation, the artisan here becomes his own agricultural
labourer and produces an important part of the food he consumes. Archi-
tecture ? Town planning ? The logical study of the cell and its functions in
relation to the mass may furnish a solution rich in results.

PIERRE JEANNERET, 1925

we find that the house and its outbuildings take up 50 to 100 square yards ; and
beds, etc . All this involves an absorbing, costly and laborious upkeep. The
space left for games or sports. Now it ought to be possible to indulge in games
grounds ,” which are really only suitable for professionals or people of leisure,
garden 5 o square yards (both garden and house may be on the ground-floor level
of fiats or maisonnettes large playgrounds for football, tennis, etc., to the tune
devoted to agriculture of an industrialized and intensive kind, giving a large
produce, etc.). A farmer acts as superintendent and manager of a grouping.

576 MA1SOKS 1’CHJH

I’AU *1 A ISON

HOUSING SCHEME FOR GARDEN CITIES ON THE “HONEYCOMB” PRINCIPLE

*51

This is a genuine industrialisation of the Builders’ Yard.

LE CORBUSIER AND PIERRE JEANNERET, 1924. MASS-PRODUCTION

ARTISANS’ DWELLINGS

The problem was that of housing artisans in a large and well-lit workshop ;
of lowering costs by the elimination as far as possible of partitions and doors ,
and by the reduction in the normal wall surfaces and heights of rooms — this by
a little architectural management. The houses are built round a single
hollow column of reinforced concrete. The walls are of compressed straw
sheets {which have good insulating properties') rendered on the outside by i\"
cement rendering thrown on under pressure by a “ cement-gun and plastered
inside. There are only two doors to a house. The loft or upper floor , on the
diagonal \ allows the ceiling to be developed to its full extent (21 feet X 21 feet) ;
the walls also are displayed to their full dimensions , and, ?noreover, the use of
the diagonal creates an unexpected dimension : this little house , 21 feet square,
gives along the diagonal the effect of a dimension of 30 feet in length.

TOWARDS A NEW ARCHITECTURE

CITIi AllDliWOlUVr.

Sl/PEUF. MOY DliS LOTS 2)0 Ml.

V OllVKlliilS

II.M.UTKISF EMPLOYES
0. PISCINE

ECU&EEE WMS P METRE

LE CORBUSIER AND PIERRE JEANNERET, I924. HOUSING SCHEME

All the houses are constructed of standardised elements , forming a “ cell ”
type . The plots are all equal, the arrangement regular. Architecture is very
well able to express itself in a precise fashion.

1 fliLi

MASS-PRODUCTION HOUSES

LE CORBUSIER AND PIERRE JEANNERET, I 924. ONE OF THE CELLS OF
A “freehold maisonette” BLOCK (see EARLIER illustrations).

A mass-production scheme, for the man of to-day : the elements are archi-
tectural, the construction is entirely industrialized .

258

TOWARDS A NEW ARCHITECTURE

LE CORBUSIER AND PIERRE JEANNERET, I925. A VILLA AT BORDEAUX.

Constructed of mass-production elements with the same machinery as was
used for the garden-city houses at Pessac. Mass-production is not an obstacle
to Architecture. On the contrary, it brings unity and perfection in detail and
offers variety in the mass.

MASS-PRODUCTION HOUSES

259

A VILLA AT BORDEAUX

UNIVERSITY QUARTER

Attempts are made at enormous cost to build quarters for university students
which may reproduce the poetry of the old buildings at Oxford. A costly
poetry, disastrously so ! The modern student is in any case inclined to protest
against an old-world Oxford : an old-world Oxford is the dream of the
modern Mcecenas, the donor of such a university quarter. What the student
wants is a monk's cell, well lit and heated, with a corner from which he can
look at the stars. He wants to find opportunity for games with his fellow-
students at a stone's throw. His cell should be self-contained, as far as
possible.

PLAN AND SECTIONS

Every student has a right to exactly the same type of cell : it would be invidious
that the poor student should occupy a cell different from that of the rich student.
There is the problem to be solved : the university-quarter-caravansary : each
“ cell" has its antechamber, its kitchen , its W.C., its living-room, its sleeping-
loft, its roof-garden. Each student is cut off by walls from his neighbours.
All the students can forgather on their sports-grounds or in the communal
halls in the large buildings destined for communal services. We have to
classify, form a type and settle the form of the cell and its elements. Economy.
Efficiency. And Architecture ? We can always achieve this when the
problem is clear.

The university quarter is here conceived in a “ shed " form ; a mode of con-
struction which allows of indefinite expansion, with ideal lighting and an
absence of constructional (and so costly ) masses. The walls are mere
fillings in light insulating materials.

260

MASS-PRODUCTION HOUSES

26 3

longer be an archaic entity, heavily rooted in the soil by deep
foundations, built “ firm and strong, 5 ’ the object of the devotion
on which the cult of the family and the race has so long been
concentrated.

Eradicate from your mind any hard and fast conceptions in
regard to the dwelling-house and look at the question from an
objective and critical angle, and you will inevitably arrive at
the fi£ House-Tool,” the mass-production house, available for
everyone, incomparably healthier than the old kind (and
morally so too) and beautiful in the same sense that the
working tools, familiar to us in our present existence, are
beautiful.

It will be beautiful, too, with the vitality that the artist’s
sensibility can give to its strict and pure organism.

But it is essential to create the right state of mind for living
in mass-production houses .

Everybody, quite rightly, dreams of sheltering himself in a
sure and permanent home of his own. This dream, because it
is impossible in the existing state of things, is deemed incapable
of realization and so provokes an actual state of sentimental
hysteria ; to build one’s own house is very much like making
one’s will. . . . When the time does arrive for building this
house, it is not the mason’s nor the craftsman’s moment, but
that moment in which every man makes one poem, at any rate,
in his life. And so, in our towns and their outskirts, we have
had during the last forty years not so much houses as poems ,
poems of an Indian summer, for a house is the crowning of a
career ... at that very moment when a man is sufficiently old

264

TOWARDS A NEW ARCHITECTURE

and worn by life to be the prey of rheumatism and of death . . .
and of crazy ideas.

A question of a new spirit :

I am 40 years old, why should I not buy a house for myself ?
for I need this instrument ; a house built on the same principles
as the Ford car I bought (or my Citroen, if I am particular).

Collaborators already consecrated to the task^ : big industry,
the specialized factories.

Collaborators who must be brought in : the suburban railway
lines, financial organizations, transformed Architectural Schools.

The aim : mass-production houses.

The coalition: one between architects and men of taste,
and the universal love of the home.

The executive : business concerns and true architects.

Irrefutable proof :

1. The Salon de Variation ;

2. Towns celebrated for beauty (the Venetian Procuracies,
the rue de Rivoli, the place des Vosges, la Carriere, Versailles,
etc. : all mass-production). For the mass-production house implies
general lines of a generous and ample sort. It necessitates a
minute study of every detail connected with the house, and a
close search for a standard, that is for a type. When this type
has been created, we are already at the gates of beauty ( cf the
motor-car, the liner, the lorry, the airplane). For the mass-

MASS-PRODUCTION HOUSES

265

production house will impose unity in the various elements,
windows, doors, methods of construction, materials. Unity in
detail and large general lines— this was the demand, in Louis
XIV’s reign, in the muddled, congested, inextricable and
uninhabitable Paris of that time, of a very intelligent abbe ,
Laugier, who busied himself with town-planning : Uniformity
in detail and variety in the general effect (the exact opposite of
what we do to-day : a mad variety in details, and a deadly
uniformity in the setting out of our streets and towns).

Conclusion : We are dealing with an urgent problem of our
epoch, nay more, with the problem of our epoch. The balance
of society comes down to a question of building. We conclude
with these justifiable alternatives : A.rchitecture or Revolution.

A LOW-PRESSURE VENTILATING FAN

40,000 KILOWATT turbine for electricity

ARCHITECTURE

REVOLUTION

In every field of industry , new problems have presented themselves
and new tools have been created capable of resolving them. If this
new fact be set against the past , then you have revolution.

In building and construction, mass-production had already been
begun; in face of new economic needs, mass-production units have
been created both in mass and detail, and definite results have been
achieved both in detail and in mass.

If this fact be set against the past, then you have revolution,
both in the method employed and in the large scale on which it has been
carried out.

The history of Architecture unfolds itself slowly across the centuries
as a modification of structure and ornament, but in the last fifty years
steel and concrete have brought new conquests, which are the index of a
greater capacity for construction, and of an architecture in which the old
codes have been overturned. If we challenge the past, we shall learn
that u styles ” no longer exist for us, that a style belonging to our own
period has come about ; and there has been a revolution.

Our minds have consciously or unconsciously apprehended these
events and new needs have arisen, consciously or unconsciously . The
machinery of Society, profoundly out of gear, oscillates between an
amelioration, of historical importance, and a catastrophe.

The primordial instinct of every human being is to assure himself
of a shelter.

The various classes of workers in society to-day no longer have
dwellings adapted to their needs ; neither the artisan nor the
intellectual.

It is a question of building which is at the root of the social unrest
of to-day ; architecture or revolution.

ARCHITECTURE OR REVOLUTION

271

TN every province of industry, new problems have arisen and
have been met by the creation of a body of tools capable
of dealing with them. We do not appreciate sufficiently the
deep chasm between our own epoch and earlier periods ; it is
admitted that this age has effected a great transformation, but
the really useful thing would be to draw up a parallel table of
its activities — intellectual, social, economic and industrial — not
only in relation to the preceding period at the beginning of the
nineteenth century, but to the history of civilizations in
general. It would quickly be seen that the tools that man has
made for himself, which automatically meet the needs of society,
and which till now had undergone only slight modifications in
a slow evolution, have been transformed all at once with an
amazing rapidity. These tools in the past were always in
man's hands ; to-day they have been entirely and formidably
refashioned and for the time being are out of our grasp. The
human animal stands breathless and panting before the tool that
he cannot take hold of ; progress appears to him as hateful as
it is praiseworthy ; all is confusion within his mind ; he feels
himself to be the slave of a frantic state of things and experiences
no sense of liberation or comfort or amelioration. This is a
great but critical period, above all of a moral crisis. To pass
the crisis we must create the state of mind which can understand
what is going on ; the human aniijial must learn to use his
tools. When this human animal has put on his new harness

TOWARDS A NEW ARCHITECTURE

Mil

and knows the effort that is expected from him, he will see that
things have changed : and changed for the better.

One more word on the past. Our own epoch, that is to say
the last fifty years only, confronts the ten ages that have gone
before. During these earlier ages, man ordered his life in
conformity with what people call a 44 natural 55 system ; he
took his tasks upon his own shoulders and brought them to a
satisfactory conclusion, bearing all the consequences of his own

ARCHITECTURE OR REVOLUTION

273

STEEL CONSTRUCTION. THE STEEL CORPORATION

little enterprises : he rose with the sun, went to bed at dusk ;
he laid down his tools preoccupied with the task in hand and
what he would begin on the morrow. He worked at home in
a little booth, with his family around him. He lived like a snail
in its shell, in a lodging made exactly to his measure ; there was
nothing to induce him to modify this state of things, which was
indeed harmonious enough. The family life unfolded itself in
a normal way. The father watched over his children in the
cradle and later on in the workshop : effort and gain succeeded
one another peacefully within the family order ; and in this the
family found its profit. Now when this is so, society is stable

274

TOWARDS A NEW ARCHITECTURE

“ AMERICA ”

A. Racing Car of 250 h.p capable of over 160 m.p.b.

and likely to endure. That is the story of ten ages of work
organised within the family unit ; and the story too of every
past age up to the middle of the nineteenth century.

But let us observe to-day the mechanism of the family.
Industry has brought us to the mass-produced article ;
machinery is at work in close collaboration with man ; the
right man for the right job is coldly selected; labourers,
workmen, foremen, engineers, managers, administrators — each
in his proper place ; and the man who is made of the right stuff
to be a manager will not long remain a workman ; the higher
places are open to all. Specialisation ties man to his machine ;
an absolute precision is demanded of every worker, for the
article passed on to the next man cannot be snatched back in
order to be corrected and fitted ; it must be exact in order that

ARCHITECTURE OR REVOLUTION 275

it may play, by that very reason, its part as a detailed unit
which will be required to fit automatically into the assem-
bling of the whole. The father no longer teaches his son the
various secrets of his little trade ; a strange foreman directs
severely and precisely the restrained and circumscribed tasks.
The worker makes one tiny detail, always the same one, during
months of work, perhaps during years of work, perhaps for the
rest of his life. He only sees his task reach its finality in the
finished work at the moment when it is passed, in its bright
and shining purity, into the factory yard to be placed in a
delivery-van. The spirit of the worker's booth no longer exists,
but certainly there does exist a more collective spirit. If the
workman is intelligent he will understand the final end of his
labour, and this will fill him with a legitimate pride. When the
Auto announces that such and such a car has reached 1 80 miles
an hour, the workmen will gather together and tell one another :
<c Our car did that ! ” There we have a moral factor which is of
importance.

The eight hours day ! The three <e eights ” in the factory !
The shifts working in relays. This one starting at 10 p.m. and
finishing at 6 a.m. ; another one ending at 2 p.m. Did our
legislators think of that when they granted the eight hours day ?
What is the man going to do with his freedom from 6 a.m. till
10 p.m. ; from 2 p.m. till night ? What becomes of the family
under these conditions ? The lodging is there, you will say, to
receive and welcome the human animal, and the worker is
sufficiently cultivated to know how to make a healthy use of so
many hours of liberty. But this is exactly what is not the case ;

TOWARDS A NEW ARCHITECTURE

2 7 6

NEW YORK

the lodging is hideous, and his mind not sufficiently educated
to use all these hours of liberty. We may well say, then :
Architecture or demoralization — demoralization and revolution.

Let us examine another point :

There is a formidable industrial activity at present in pro-
gress, which is inevitably and constantly at the back of our
minds ; at every moment either directly, or through the medium
of newspapers and reviews, we are presented with objects of an
arresting novelty whose why and wherefore engrosses our
minds, and fills us with delight and fear. All these objects of
modern life create, in the long run, a modern state of mind.
Bewilderment seizes us, then, if we bring our eyes to bear on
the old and rotting buildings that form our snail-shell, our
habitation, which crush us in our daily contact with them —

ARCHITECTURE OR REVOLUTION

277

A CRANE

putrid and useless and unproductive. Everywhere can be seen
machines which serve to produce something and produce it
admirably, in a clean sort of way. The machine that we live in
is an old coach full of tuberculosis. There is no real link
between our daily activities at the factory, the office or the bank,
which are healthy and useful and productive, and our activities
in the bosom of the family which are handicapped at every
turn. The family is everywhere being killed and men’s minds
demoralised in servitude to anachronisms.

Every man’s mind, being moulded by his participation in
contemporary events, has consciously or unconsciously formed
certain desires ; these are inevitably connected with the family,
an instinct which is the basis of society. Every man to-day
realises his need of sun, of warmth, of pure air and clean floors ;
he has been taught to wear a shiny white collar, and women
love fine white linen. Man feels to-day that he must have intel-
lectual diversion, relaxation for his body, and the physical

2 7 8

TOWARDS A NEW ARCHITECTURE

ship’s COALERS ON THE RHINE

culture needed to recuperate him after the tension of muscle
or brain which his labour — “ hard labour ” — brings. This mass
of desires constitutes in fact a mass of demands.

Now our social organization has nothing ready which can
answer these needs.

Another point : what are the conclusions of the intellectuals
face to face with the actualities of modem life ?

The magnificent flowering of industry in our epoch has
created a special class of intellectuals so numerous that it con-
stitutes the really active stratum of society.

In the workshop, in the technical departments, in the learned
Societies, in the banks and in the great stores, on newspapers
and reviews, there are the engineers, the heads of departments,
legal representatives, secretaries, editors, accountants who work

ARCHITECTURE OR REVOLUTION

279

out minutely, in accordance with their duty, the formidable
things which occupy our attention : there are the men who
design our bridges, ships and airplanes, who create our motors
and turbines, who direct the workshops and yards, who are
engaged in the distribution of capital and in accountancy, who
do the purchasing of goods in the colonies or from the factory,
who put forth so many articles in the Press on the modern
production of so much that is noble and horrible, who record
as on a chart the high-temperature curve of a humanity in
labour, in perpetual labour, at a crisis — sometimes in delirium.
All human material passes through their hands. In the end
their observation must lead them to some conclusion. These
people have their eyes fixed on the display of goods in the great
shops that man has made for himself. The modern age is
spread before them, sparkling and radiant ... on the far side
of the barrier ! In their own homes, where they live in a
precarious ease, since their remuneration bears no real relation
to the quality of their work, they find their uncleanly old
snail-shell, and they cannot even think of having a family.
If they do so there will begin the slow martyrdom that
we all know. These people, too, claim their rights to a
machine for living in, which shall be in all simplicity a
human thing.

Both the worker and the intellectual are precluded from
following their deepest instincts in regard to the family ; each
and every day they make use of the brilliant and effective tools
that the age has provided, but they are not enabled thereby to
use them for themselves. Nothing could be more discouraging

2 8 o

TOWARDS A NEW ARCHITECTURE

or more irritating. Nothing is prepared. We may well say :
Architecture or Revolution.

Though modern society does not recompense its intel-
lectuals judiciously, it still tolerates the old arrangements as to
property which are a serious barrier in the way of transforming
the town or the house. Established property rests on inheri-
tance and its highest aim is a state of inertia, of no change and
of maintaining the status quo. Although every other sort of

A TURBINE DISC FROM THE CREUSOT WORKS: 40,000 KILOWATTS

ARCHITECTURE OR REVOLUTION 281

human enterprise is subject to the rough warfare of competition,
the landlord, ensconced in his property, escapes the common
law in a princely fashion : he is a king. On the existing prin-
ciple of property, it is impossible to establish a constructional
programme which will hold together. And so the necessary
building is not done. But if existing property arrangements
were changed, and they are changing, it would be possible to
build ; there would be an enthusiasm for building, and we
should avoid Revolution.

The advent of a new period only occurs after long and quiet
preparatory work.

VENTILATORS

Hourly output 5 7,000 cubic metres .

282

TOWARDS A NEW ARCHITECTURE

CHICAGO. CONSTRUCTION OF A WINDOW: INDUSTRIALIZATION

ARCHITECTURE OR REVOLUTION

283

A forecast: the airplane of to-morrow

Industry has created its tools.

Business has modified its habits and customs.

Construction has found new means.

Architecture finds itself confronted with new laws.

Industry has created new tools : the illustrations in this
book provide a telling proof of this. Such tools are capable of

a factory (freyssinet & limousin)

284

TOWARDS A NEW ARCHITECTURE

adding to human welfare and of lightening human toil. If
these new conditions are set against the past, you have Revo-
lution.

Business has modified its customs : it bears a heavy respon-
sibility to-day : cost, time, solidity of the work. Engineers
in numbers fill its offices, make their calculations, practise the
laws of economy to an intensive degree, and seek to harmonize
two opposed factors : cheapness and good work. Intelligence
lies behind every initiative, bold innovations are demanded.
The morality of industry has been transformed : big business is
to-day a healthy and moral organism. If we set this new fact
against the past, we have Revolution in method and in the
scale of the adventure.

A HANGAR (FREYSSINET & LIMOUSIN)

Width 250 feet, height 150 feet, length over 900 feet. The Nave of Notre
Tame is 40 feet wide and about 107 feet in height.

286

TOWARDS A NEW ARCHITECTURE

Construction has discovered its methods, methods which in
themselves mean a liberation that earlier ages had sought in
vain. Everything is possible by calculation and invention,
provided that there is at our disposal a sufficiently perfected
body of tools, and this does exist. Concrete and steel have
entirely transformed the constructional organisation hitherto
known, and the exactitude with which these materials can be
adapted to calculation and theory every day provides encour-
aging results, both in the success achieved and in their appear-
ance, which recalls natural phenomena and constantly repro-
duces experiences realized in nature. If we set ourselves against
the past, we can then appreciate the fact that new formulas have
been found which only need exploitation to bring about (if we
are wise enough to break with routine) a genuine liberation
from the constraints we have till now been subjected to. There
has been Revolution in methods of construction.

Architecture finds itself confronted with new laws. Con-
struction has undergone innovations so great that the old
ec styles/’ which still obsess us, can no longer clothe it ; the
materials employed evade the attentions of the decorative artist.
There is so much novelty in the forms and rhythms furnished
by these constructional methods, such novelty in arrangement
and in the new industrial programmes, that we can no longer
close our minds to the true and profound laws of architecture
which are established on mass, rhythm and proportion :
the “ styles ” no longer exist, they are outside our ken ; if
they still trouble us, it is as parasites. If we set ourselves
against the past, we are forced to the conclusion that the

THE ‘FIAT WORKSHOPS AT TURIN WITH THE TESTING TRACK

ON THE ROOF

287

288

TOWARDS A NEW ARCHITECTURE

old architectural code, with its mass of rules and regulations
evolved during four thousand years, is no longer of any
interest ; it no longer concerns us : all the values have been
revised ; there has been revolution in the conception of what
Architecture is.

Disturbed by the reactions which play upon him from every
quarter, the man of to-day is conscious, on the one hand, of a
new world which is forming itself regularly, logically and
clearly, which produces in a straightforward way things which
are useful and usable, and on the other hand he finds himself, to
his surprise, living in an old and hostile environment. This
framework is his lodging ; his town, his street, his house or his
flat rise up against him useless, hinder him from following the
same path in his leisure that he pursues in his work, hinder him
from following in his leisure the organic development of his
existence, which is to create a family and to live, like every
animal on this earth and like all men of all ages, an organized
family life. In this way society is helping forward the destruc-
tion of the family, while she sees with terror that this will be
her ruin.

There reigns a great disagreement between the modern state
of mind, which is an admonition to us, and the stifling accumu-
lation of age-long detritus.

The problem is one of adaptation, in which the realities of
our life are in question.

Society is filled with a violent desire for something which it
may obtain or may not. Everything lies in that : everything

ARCHITECTURE OR REVOLUTION

289

depends on the effort made and the attention paid to these
alarming symptoms.

Architecture or Revolution.

Revolution can be avoided.

A BRIAR PIPE

A CATALOG OF SELECTED DOVER
BOOKS IN ALL FIELDS OF INTEREST

CONCERNING THE SPIRITUAL IN ART, Wassily Kandinsky. Pioneering work
by father of abstract art. Thoughts on color theory, nature of art. Analysis of earlier
masters. 12 illustrations. 80pp. of text. 5% x 8!4. 23411-8

ANIMALS: 1,419 Copyright-Free Illustrations of Mammals, Birds, Fish, Insects, etc.,
Jim Harter (ed.). Clear wood engravings present, in extremely lifelike poses, over
1,000 species of animals. One of the most extensive pictorial sourcebooks of its kind.
Captions. Index. 284pp. 9 x 12. 23766-4

CELTIC ART: The Methods of Construction, George Bain. Simple geometric tech-
niques for making Celtic interlacements, spirals, Kells-type initials, animals, humans, etc.
Over 500 illustrations. 160pp. 9 x 12. (Available in U.S. only.) 22923-8

AN ATLAS OF ANATOMY FOR ARTISTS, Fritz Schider. Most thorough refer-
ence work on art anatomy in the world. Hundreds of illustrations, including selec-
tions from works by Vesalius, Leonardo, Goya, Ingres, Michelangelo, others. 593
illustrations. 192pp. Tk x 10'/t. 20241-0

CELTIC HAND STROKE-BY-STROKE (Irish Half-Uncial from “The Book of
Kells”): An Arthur Baker Calligraphy Manual, Arthur Baker. Complete guide to cre-
ating each letter of the alphabet in distinctive Celtic manner. Covers hand position,
strokes, pens, inks, paper, more. Illustrated. 48pp. 8% x 11. 24336-2

EASY ORIGAMI, John Montroll. Charming collection of 32 projects (hat, cup, pel-
ican, piano, swan, many more) specially designed for the novice origami hobbyist.
Clearly illustrated easy-to-follow instructions insure that even beginning paper-
crafters will achieve successful results. 48pp. 8% x 11. 27298-2

THE COMPLETE BOOK OF BIRDHOUSE CONSTRUCTION FOR WOOD-
WORKERS, Scott D. Campbell. Detailed instructions, illustrations, tables. Also data
on bird habitat and instinct patterns. Bibliography. 3 tables. 63 illustrations in 15 fig-
ures. 48pp. 5% x 854. 24407-5

BLOOMINGDALE’S ILLUSTRATED 1886 CATALOG: Fashions, Dry Goods
and Housewares, Bloomingdale Brothers. Famed merchants’ extremely rare catalog
depicting about 1,700 products: clothing, housewares, firearms, dry goods, jewelry,
more. Invaluable for dating, identifying vintage items. Also, copyright-free graphics
for artists, designers. Co-published with Henry Ford Museum & Greenfield Village.
160pp. 8/4 x 11. 25780-0

HISTORIC COSTUME IN PICTURES, Braun & Schneider. Over 1,450 costumed
figures in clearly detailed engravings— from dawn of civilization to end of 19th cen-
tury. Captions. Many folk costumes. 256pp. 8% x 11%. 23150-X

CATALOG OF DOVER BOOKS

MY BONDAGE AND MY FREEDOM, Frederick Douglass. Born a slave,
Douglass became outspoken force in antislavery movement. The best of Douglass’
autobiographies. Graphic description of slave life. 464pp. 5% x 8/6. 22457-0

FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR: A Journey Around the World, Mark Twain.
Fascinating humorous account of 1897 voyage to Hawaii, Australia, India, New
Zealand, etc. Ironic, bemused reports on peoples, customs, climate, flora and fauna,
politics, much more. 197 illustrations. 720pp. 5 % x 8/4. 26113-1

THE PEOPLE CALLED SHAKERS, Edward D. Andrews. Definitive study of
Shakers: origins, beliefs, practices, dances, social organization, furniture and crafts,
etc. 33 illustrations. 351pp. 5% x 8!4. 21081-2

THE MYTHS OF GREECE AND ROME, H. A. Guerber. A classic of mythology,
generously illustrated, long prized for its simple, graphic, accurate retelling of the
principal myths of Greece and Rome, and for its commentary on their origins and
significance. With 64 illustrations by Michelangelo, Raphael, Titian, Rubens,
Canova, Bernini and others. 480pp. 5% x 814. 27584-1

PSYCHOLOGY OF MUSIC, Carl E. Seashore. Classic work discusses music as a
medium from psychological viewpoint. Clear treatment of physical acoustics, audi-
tory apparatus, sound perception, development of musical skills, nature of musical
feeling, host of other topics. 88 figures. 408pp. 5% x 8 '4. 21851-1

THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY, Georg W. Hegel. Great classic of Western
thought develops concept that history is not chance but rational process, the evolu-
tion of freedom. 457pp. 5% x 814. 201 12-0

THE BOOK OF TEA, Kakuzo Okakura. Minor classic of the Orient: entertaining,
charming explanation, interpretation of traditional Japanese culture in terms of tea
ceremony. 94pp. 5% x 816. 20070-1

LIFE IN ANCIENT EGYPT, Adolf Erman. Fullest, most thorough, detailed older
account with much not in more recent books, domestic life, religion, magic, medi-
cine, commerce, much more. Many illustrations reproduce tomb paintings, carvings,
hieroglyphs, etc. 597pp. 5% x 814. 22632-8

SUNDIALS, Their Theory and Construction, Albert Waugh. Far and away the best,
most thorough coverage of ideas, mathematics concerned, types, construction,
adjusting anywhere. Simple, nontechnical treatment allows even children to build
several of these dials. Over 100 illustrations. 230pp. 5% x 814. 22947-5

THEORETICAL HYDRODYNAMICS, L. M. Milne-Thomson. Classic exposition
of the mathematical theory of fluid motion, applicable to both hydrodynamics and
aerodynamics. Over 600 exercises. 768pp. 614 x 914. 68970-0

SONGS OF EXPERIENCE: Facsimile Reproduction with 26 Plates in Full Color,
William Blake. 26 full-color plates from a rare 1826 edition. Includes “The Tyger,”
“London,” “Holy Thursday,” and other poems. Printed text of poems. 48pp. 5 'A x 7.

24636-1

OLD-TIME VIGNETTES IN FULL COLOR, Carol Belanger Grafton (ed.). Over
390 charming, often sentimental illustrations, selected from archives of Victorian
graphics-pretty women posing, children playing, food, flowers, kittens and puppies,
smiling cherubs, birds and butterflies, much more. All copyright-free. 48pp. 9'A x 1214.

27269-9

CATALOG OF DOVER BOOKS

THE WIT AND HUMOR OF OSCAR WILDE, Alvin Redman (ed.). More than
1,000 ripostes, paradoxes, wisecracks: Work is the curse of the drinking classes; I can
resist everything except temptation; etc, 258pp. 5% x 8/4. 20602-5

SHAKESPEARE LEXICON AND QUOTATION DICTIONARY, Alexander
Schmidt. Full definitions, locations, shades of meaning in every word in plays and
poems. More than 50,000 exact quotations. 1,485pp. 614 x 914. 2-vol. set.

Vol. 1: 22726-X
Vol. 2: 22727-8

SELECTED POEMS, Emily Dickinson. .Over 100 best-known, best-loved poems by
one of America’s foremost poets, reprinted from authoritative early editions. No
comparable edition at this price. Index of first lines. 64pp. 5 3 /i6 x 814. 26466-1

THE INSIDIOUS DR. FU-MANCHU, Sax Rohmer. The first of the popular - mys-
tery series introduces a pair of English detectives to their archnemesis, the diabolical.
Dr. Fu-Manchu. Flavorful atmosphere, fast-paced action, and colorful characters
enliven this classic of the genre. 208pp. 5 3 /i« x 814. 29898-1

THE MALLEUS MALEFICARUM OF KRAMER AND SPRENGER, translated
by Montague Summers. Full text of most important witchhunter’s “bible,” used by
both Catholics and Protestants. 278pp. 6% x 10. 22802.-9

SPANISH STORIES/CUENTOS ESPANOLES: A Dual-Language Book, Angel
Flores (ed.). Unique format offers 13 great stories in Spanish by Cervantes, Borges,
others. Faithful English translations on facing. pages. 352pp. 5% x 814. 253.9.9-6

GARDEN CITY, LONG ISLAND, IN EARLY PHOTOGRAPHS, 1869-1919,
Mildred H. Smith. Handsome treasury of 118 vintage pictures, accompanied by care-
fully researched captions, document the Garden City Hotel fire (1899), the Vander-
bilt Cup Race (1908), the first airmail flight departing from the Nassau Boulevard
Aerodrome (1911), and much more. 96pp. 8% x 11%. 40669-5

OLD QUEENS, N.Y., IN EARLY PHOTOGRAPHS, Vincent F. Seyfried and
William Asadorian. Over 160 rare photographs of Maspeth, Jamaica,- Jackson
Heights, and other areas. Vintage views of DeWitt Clinton mansion, 1939 World’s
Fair and more. Captions. 192pp. 8% x 11. 26358-4

CAPTURED BY THE INDIANS.' 15 Firsthand Accounts, 1750-1870, Frederick
Drimmer. Astounding true historical accounts of grisly torture, bloody conflicts,
relentless pursuits, miraculous escapes and more, by people who lived to tell the tale.
384pp. 5% x 814. 24901-8

THE WORLD’S GREAT SPEECHES (Fourth Enlarged Edition), Lewis Copeland,
Lawrence W. Lamm, and Stephen J. McKenna. Nearly 300 speeches provide public
speakers with a wealth of updated quotes -and inspiration— from Pericles’ funeral ora-
tion and William Jennings Bryan’s “Cross of Gold Speech” to Malcolm X’s powerful
words on the Black Revolution and Earl of Spenser’s tribute to his sister, Diana,
Princess of Wales. 944pp. 5% x 8%. 40903-1

THE BOOK OF THE SWORD, Sir Richard F. Burton. Great Victorian
scholar/adventurer’s eloquent, erudite history of the “queen of weapons”-from pre-
history to early Roman Empire. Evolution and development of early swords, varia-
tions (sabre, broadsword, cutlass, scimitar, etc.), much more. 336pp. 614 x 914.

25434-8-

TOWARDS A NEW
ARCHITECTURE

Le Corbusier

For the Swiss-born architect and city planner Le Corbusier (Charles-Edouard
Jeanneret, 1887-1965), architecture constituted a noble art, an exalted calling in
which the architect combined plastic invention, intellectual speculation, and
higher mathematics to go beyond mere utilitarian needs, beyond “style,” to
achieve a pure creation of the spirit which established “emotional relationships
by means of raw materials.”

The first major exposition of his ideas appeared in Vers une Architecture (1923),
a compilation of articles originally written by Le Corbusier for his own avant-
g^de magazine, V Esprit Nouveau. The present volume is an unabridged
English translation of the 13th French edition of that historic manifesto, in which
Le Corbusier expounded his technical and aesthetic theories, views on industry,
economics, relation of form to function, the “mass-production spirit,” and much
else. A principal prophet of the “modern” movement in architecture, and a
near-legendary figure of the “International School,” he designed some of the
twentieth century’s most memorable buildings: Chapel at Ronchamp; Swiss
dormitory at the Cite Universitaire, Paris; Unite d’Habitation, Marseilles; and
many more.

Le Corbusier brought great passion and intelligence to these essays, which
present his ideas in a concise, pithy style, Studded with epigrammatic, often
provocative, observations: “American engineers overwhelm with their calcula-
tions our expiring architecture.” “Architecture is stifled by custom. It is the only
profession in which progress is not considered necessary.” “. . . a cathedral is not
very beautiful . . .” and “Rome is the damnation of the half-educated. To send
architectural students to Rome is to cripple them for life.”

Profusely illustrated with over 200 line' drawings and photographs of his own
works and other structures he considered important, Towards a New Architec-
ture is indispensable reading for architects, city planners, and cultural ^his-
torians — but will intrigue anyone fascinated by the wide-ranging ideas, -unvar-
nished opinions and innovative theories of one of this century’s Piaster builders.

Unabridged and unalter
French edition of Vers u
London, 1931. 85 line drav
by Frederick Etchells. 32

$12-15 IN USA

Towards a New Architecture
0-486-25023-7

SD12

41132

Cover design by Paul E. Kennedy

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